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We analyze behavior of food prices in India during the last decade at a disaggregate level. Systematic decomposition shows that eggs, meat, fish, milk, cereals, and vegetables are the main contributors to food inflation. Fruits and vegetables showed a much higher short-term volatility in prices. All the major contributors possess a higher weight in the consumption basket, indicating that the weight of a commodity has much larger bearing on its overall contribution to food inflation, as compared to other factors such as base effect or percentage change in prices (inflation). The inflation-volatility patterns reveal that the commodities that have higher income elasticity of demand but have limited processing and storage facilities, such as fruits and vegetables, are characterized by higher volatility. Econometric analysis shows that while cereal and edible oil prices appear to be mainly driven by supply-side factors such as production, wage rates, and minimum support prices, for pulses, the effects of supply and demand factors appear almost equal. On the other hand, prices of eggs, meat, fish, milk, and fruits and vegetables appear to be driven mainly by demand-side factors. Price projections show that the eggs-meat-fish-milk group shows the highest increase because of the higher income elasticities of demand and the rapid increase in India's per capita income in the recent years. Keywords Inflation • Food prices • Food inflation • IndiaThe authors would like to extend special thanks to the anonymous reviewer of the journal for very insightful suggestions/comments. Special thanks to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) South Asia office and the Institute of Economic Growth (IEG) for the support provided. Thanks are also due to the participants of various conferences at IFPRI, IEG, Indian Statistical Institute and Centre for Economic and Social Studies, where this paper was presented, for their comments/suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies.

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Application of pesticide inside orchards with conventional sprayers often results in an inefficient application as these are constant rate applicators and also the significant amount of pesticide gets lost in spaces between trees. To reduce the pesticide losses inside orchards, a variable rate sprayer was developed which sprayed only after the occurrence of the tree and according to the size of the tree. The performance of the developed variable rate sprayer was evaluated inside guava trees to quantify the spray deposition at six different plant positions. The sprayer was operated at three forward speeds (2, 3 and 4 km/h) with four air velocity levels (20, 25, 30 and 35 m/s) and two different types of nozzles (hollow cone and flat fan nozzle). The observed data was statistically analyzed to study the significance of selected parameters on spray deposition. The spray deposition was found to significantly increase with the increase in air velocity and hollow cone nozzle was able to deposit more amount of spray as compared to flat fan nozzle. There was no significant variation was observed with different forward speeds. The maximum spray was deposited on upper leaf surface at all selected plant position. The uniform spray deposition was observed with the air velocity of 35 m/s and hollow cone nozzle. Even though the developed variable rate sprayer varied the discharge of nozzles according to tree size, it was able to deposit the adequate amount of spray at all selected plant positions.