India’s trade potential and export opportunities for spices

Economic growth and development of a country rely on trade as it serves as a driving force with efficient utilization of factor of endowments. Several commodities are traded world-wide, among them spices which has a long history of being one of the highly traded commodity. Developing countries including India are the leading producer and exporter of spices in the world. The demand for Indian spices has gone up in the United States of America, Vietnam, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, etc. The study assess the comparative advantage of major spices exporting countries for pepper, cardamom and turmeric-based on data available in International Trade Centre. To analyse the effect of trade liberalisation, a simulation model (SMART) developed by UNCTAD was used to estimate trade creation, diversion and revenue effect on importing and exporting countries. The result shows that India has a comparative advantage in the export of Turmeric, Guatemala in Cardamom and Vietnam in Pepper. The impact of tariff relief on India has greater advantage, which has trade creation in the export of cardamom and turmeric. Whereas in pepper, comparatively, trade diversion is higher than trade creation, indicating that less efficient countries are given a chance to export to the top importing countries due to a reduction in tariff. Indian spice exporters should focus on promoting or exporting spices to countries like Netherlands, United States, United Kingdom, and Germany

Novel Acid-Activated Fluorophores Reveal a Dynamic Wave of Protons in the Intestine of Caenorhabditis elegans

Unlike the digestive systems of vertebrate animals, the lumen of the alimentary canal of C. elegans is unsegmented and weakly acidic (pH ~ 4.4), with ultradian fluctuations to pH > 6 every 45 to 50 seconds. To probe the dynamics of this acidity, we synthesized novel acid-activated fluorophores termed Kansas Reds. These dicationic derivatives of rhodamine B become concentrated in the lumen of the intestine of living C. elegans and exhibit tunable pKa values (2.3–5.4), controlled by the extent of fluorination of an alkylamine substituent, that allow imaging of a range of acidic fluids in vivo. Fluorescence video microscopy of animals freely feeding on these fluorophores revealed that acidity in the C. elegans intestine is discontinuous; the posterior intestine contains a large acidic segment flanked by a smaller region of higher pH at the posterior-most end. Remarkably, during the defecation motor program, this hot spot of acidity rapidly moves from the posterior intestine to the anterior-most intestine where it becomes localized for up to 7 seconds every 45 to 50 seconds. Studies of pH-insensitive and base-activated fluorophores as well as mutant and transgenic animals revealed that this dynamic wave of acidity requires the proton exchanger PBO-4, does not involve substantial movement of fluid, and likely involves the sequential activation of proton transporters on the apical surface of intestinal cells. Lacking a specific organ that sequesters low pH, C. elegans compartmentalizes acidity by producing of a dynamic hot spot of protons that rhythmically migrates from the posterior to anterior intestine