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Sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas under the family Convolvulaceae (Chromosome No. 2n = 6x = 90) is an important tuber crop grown mostly in tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, Latin America, the Pacific islands, Papua New Guinea and Africa. India and China are the leading sweet potato growing countries in the world. In India, it is largely grown in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra,
Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Its large, swollen, starchy, sweet-tasting, adventitious roots are used as tuberous vegetable. Orange-fleshed sweet potato, in particular, with high β carotene content has become a prominent example of the effectiveness of biofortified staple crops to combat vitamin A deficiency. Sweet potatoes are rich in dietary fibers and are also known for improving gut health and digestion. It also contains a high amount of phytosterol that has a protective effect on the digestive system. Sometimes, tender leaves and shoots are consumed as a green leafy vegetable. Sweet potato tubers are used in agro-industry for the preparation of starch, alcohol and animal feed.
Origin, domestication and adaptation in India
Sweet potato has probably been originated between the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico and the mouth of the Orinoco River in Venezuela.

Introduction 
Sorghum bicolor L. Moench, commonly known as sorghum, has emerged as a significant and promising candidate for both sugar and lignocellulosic biofuel production. Cultivated sorghum varieties exhibit a wide range of phenotypic and morphological characteristics, and based on their intended use, they have been categorized into four distinct groups: grain, forage, energy, and sweet sorghum. Grain sorghum varieties typically stand between three to six feet in height, featuring large ear heads. Their primary role is to serve as a source of food for humans or livestock feed. These varieties play a crucial role in providing sustenance and nutrition to both people and animals. Sweet sorghum, also known as sweet stalk sorghum, represents a unique group of genotypes that accumulate soluble sugars within their stalks. These varieties can grow impressively tall, reaching up to twenty feet, and produce significantly higher biomass yields compared to grain sorghum (Murray et al., 2009). Sweet sorghum’s stems are characterized by their thickness and fleshiness, although they do tend to have relatively lower seed yields. Despite this, sweet sorghum offers substantial advantages in terms of bioethanol production due to the high sucrose content present in its stalks (Srinivasa Rao et al. 2009). It has garnered recognition as an ideal candidate for bioenergy crop cultivation in tropical and temperate regions around the world, particularly in the southern United States. When compared to other bioenergy crops such as corn, wheat, sugarcane, sugar beet, cassava, and sweet potatoes, sweet sorghum presents several noteworthy benefits (Disasa et al., 2016). It is notably drought-tolerant and requires significantly less water than many other crops, such as one-third of the water needed for sugarcane and half of that required for corn. Furthermore, it exhibits tolerance to salinity, enabling its cultivation in marginal regions that are not traditionally suitable for crop production. Additionally, sweet sorghum boasts lower greenhouse gas emissions on a life-cycle basis, contributing to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly biofuel production process. The applications of sweet sorghum are diverse, with its stalks being used for various purposes. In Brazil and India, the stalk is chewed fresh or processed for the production of food-grade syrup and alcohol. Its high sucrose content makes it an excellent candidate for bioethanol production, with the potential to yield up to 8,000 liters per hectare, surpassing the ethanol yield of corn by approximately twofold and outperforming

Abstract

Airflow drying persists as the main dehydration operation. Indeed, the high expense of freeze-drying in term of equipment cost and energy consumption considerably restricts its use and confines its applications to high added value products (pharmaceutical products, cosmetics, etc.). However, airflow drying undergoes fundamental problems such as low operation performance, poor product quality and short reliability of the equipment. The time of drying is long; particularly at the end of the operation, which implies crucial energy consumption. The poor quality of the end product is related to thermal degradation and in particular to the compactness of texture as a result of the phenomena of shrinkage and case hardening. Another main problem common to all drying operations, including freeze-drying, is the safety of the end products. Swell-drying is defined as an operation that combines optimized hot air drying with instant controlled pressure controlled texturing. The improvement of texture, the preservation of sensory and nutritional quality, the possibility of manufacturing expanded granule powders and the reduction of drying time and energy consumption allow considering swell-drying as the most relevant drying process.

Aim: To determine the Efficiency Vs Load characteristics (External characteristics) of D.C. shunt motor Swinburne’s method.

This method is an indirect method of testing a DC machine. It is named after Sir James Swinburne. Swinburne’s test is the most commonly used and simplest method of testing of shunt and compound wound DC machines which have constant flux. In this test the efficiency of the machine at any load is pre-determined. We can run the machine as a motor or as a generator. The iron and friction losses are determined by measuring the input to the DC machine at no-load. The machine is to be run as a motor at normal voltage and speed. The Swinburne’s method includes all the losses in the field circuit and winding which do not occur actually in the machine but the error introduced due to this is quite insignificant and still shows the accurate results. In this method of testing no-load losses are measured separately and eventually we can determine the efficiency.

Swine influenza (Swineflu) is a highly contagious viral disease of pigs. It is an upper respiratory tract disease of pigs that causes outbreaks in herds. Swineflu infects people every year and is found typically in people who have been in contact with pigs although there have been person to person transmission of the disease. Influenza A virus subtypes namely H1N1, H1N2 and H3N2 are circulating around the world. In US, H1N1 subtype was exclusively prevalent among swine population before 1998 however since late August 1998, H3N2 subtype has been isolated from pigs. Most of the H3N2 virus isolates are triple assortants containing genes from human (HA, NA and PB1), swine (NS, NP and M) and avian (PB2 and PA) lineages. Influenza viruses are generally species specific i.e. avian influenza virus will infect only birds, swine influenza virus pigs, human influenza virus humans and so on. Although interspecies transmission of influenza viruses are reported, the transmission of influenza virus from one species to another is not always possible. Again, influenza A virus isolated from pigs can acquire the pandemic potential but not isolated from other species. Further, recent outbreaks of swineflu affecting human beings in Mexico, USA, UK,Canada, Asia etc with a death toll of 49 persons resulted in high alert in all the countries and compulsory checking of all the persons coming from the affected countries to other counties. The causative agent of swineflu is H1N1. So, it is the prime time to create awareness about the disease among the public which in turn help in tackling the disease in an effective and efficient manner and to prevent its transmission to human beings from swine species.

Etiology: Swineflu is caused by a virus under the genus Influenza A virus and family Orthomyxoviridae. Influenza A viruses are spherical with a diameter of 80-120 nm and may be filamentous. There are two types of surface glycoproteins namely haemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) present on the virus particles. A total of 17HA and 10NA types have been reported in influenza A viruses. It contains 8 copies single stranded negative sense RNA molecules as genome which encode 12 proteins: 3 subunits of the viral RNA polymerase complex, PB1 (encoding 3 proteins PB1, PB1-F2 and N-40), PB2 and PA; a nucleoprotein (NP), two surface glycoproteins, HA and NA, a matrix protein (M1), an ion channel protein (M2), a nonstructural protein (NS1) and a nuclear export protein (NEP- also known as NS2). There are 170 combinations of two surface glycoproteins, 17 HA and 10 NA that determine the antigenic properties and subtype classification of virus. However, human disease historically has been caused by 3 subtypes of HA (H1, H2 and H3) and two types of N (N1 and N2). Further in 1997, the outbreak of avianflu/birdflu in Hong Kong affected 18 persons with a death of 6 persons. The avian influenza virus responsible for that outbreak was H5N1. From that time H5, H7 and H9 ( all from avian origin) have been implicated in causing disease in human beings.

Swine Marketing

The animal population in India is nearly 14 millions which is increasing day by day. The importance of animals in Indian Economy cannot be neglected. The economic benefit from animals is 26% of the total benefit from agriculture. Agricultural farming is not possible without animals. In agricultural profession, animals have an important role. In our country, crores of small and marginal farmers and agricultural labourers depend for their life on animals for their livelihood. Poor animal wealth is not a good symptom for a country.

Till today the work which is done on animal wealth by economists and marketing specialists is only limited. Economic and marketing studies on meat producing animals in our country is very less. Pigs are normally reared for meat purposes. Pigs are mostly untouched from this type of research on economic and marketing aspects. Pig population in our country is nearly 12 millions, which is 2.5% of total animal population in India.

Due to lack of studies, it is not possible to give any statement about correct situation of marketing and capacity of pigs.

A. Answer the following questions:

1.    What is flushing?

Ans: It means putting the sow on a more nutritious ration before breedingseasonto improvephysical condition of the female, prominent heat symptoms, increases ovulation rate, shortens period between weaning to successful conception, more uniform litter size and minimizes embryonic death, prompt post weaning estrus.

2.    What is piglet anaemia?

Ans: It is a condition occurs 2-4 weeks after birth when piglets do not have access to soil or pasture and are housed in concrete floor. Piglet anemia is characterized by labored spasmodic breathing(popularlyknownasthumps); hemoglobinlevelfalls to 3-4mg/100ml of blood, poor growth rate, wrinkled skin, rough coat, lack of healthy pink color of visible mucous membrane.

3.    Why pig industry in India has not yet been developed?

Ans: It is mainly due to the fact that pig is not used as meat by majority of meat eaters.

4.    Why it is advisable to offer cereal based ration to the piglets only after two weeks?

India enjoys one of the largest livestock wealth in the world India has continued to experience an increasing growth in its livestock sector. Between 2010-11 and 2019-20, gross valueadded (GVa) from livestock sector grew at an extraordinary rate of 7.6% annually. Among the livestock species, pig finds an important place as it being reared by socio-economically weaker sections of the rural India) Pig as compared to other livestock species has a great potential to contribute to faster economic return, because of certain important inherent traits like high fecundity, better-feed conversion efficiency, early maturity and short generation interval. Pig farming requires small investment on its housing and equipment. It has immense potential to ensure nutritional and economic security for the weaker sections of the society.The pig grows fast and is a prolific breeder, farrowing 10-12 piglets at a time. It is capable of producing two litters per year under good management conditions. The carcase yield is high (65 -80% of live weight). Pigs convert inedible feeds, forages, and certain grain by products into valuable nutrition’s mean. The faeces of pigs are useful in maintaining soil fertility. Pig population According to the 20 th Livestock census of India pigs comprises 1.7 % to the total livestock population (http://dahd.nic.in). The total Pigs in the country are 9.06 million in the current Census, declined by 12.03% over the previous Census. Out of the total pigs 20.98% are either exotic or crossbred

Origin and Domestication of Pigs

Pigs are nonruminant, even-toed ungulates and belong to suborder Suina which includes hippopotamuses, peccaries and pigs. All true pigs are members of the family Suidae which includes five living genera namely Sus, Babirousa (babyrusa), Hylochoerus (giant forest hog), Phacochoerus (warthog), and Potamochoerus (bushpig and red river hog) that can be called as pigs. European breeds are believed to be descendants of the European wild pig Sus scrofa and Asiatic or oriental breeds originated from the Eastern Asiatic banded pig, Sus vittatus a successor of Sus crystatus.

(I)  Slaughter and Preservation of Swine

Clean meat production from animals has been a difficult task since ancient times. Now it has become easier due to the joint efforts of Veterinarians and progressive animal owners. For clean meat production, with healthy animals, it is essential that care is given to their better management, better breeds, good ration and arrangements for preventing diseases are made. Meat from diseased animals is of inferior quality and unfit for human consumption.

            Meat is a very useful edible material, which is used for its high nutritive value with a good taste. Due to these nutritive elements, many microorganisms come in contact with the meat and they may contaminate it and change its natural structure and composition. As a result it produces many types of toxic and bad odour substances.

            Meat has an important place amongst human foods. Meat has many pecularities for which it is used in many parts of the world and by people of different religions. Many people prefer meat because of its better taste and/or odour. Often, it is observed that people consuming meat do not prefer vegetarian foods. The active consumer always gives more importance to the nutritive elements in meat. And at the time of bying meat, they prefer taking complete meat.  Allmost in all countries of the world, few selected and common animal species are slaughtered for meat production.

Introduction

SWOC analysis is a strategic planning method used to evaluate the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Challenges involved in a project or in a business venture. It involves specifying the objective of the business venture or project and identifying the internal and external factors that are favorable and unfavorable to achieve that objective. A SWOC analysis must first start with defining a desired end state or objective. A SWOC analysis may be incorporated into the strategic planning model.

• Strengths: characteristics of the business or team that give it an advantage over others in the industry.

• Weaknesses: are characteristics that place the firm at a disadvantage relative to others.

• Opportunities: external chances to make greater sales or profits in the environment.

• Challenges: external elements in the environment that could cause trouble for the business.

These beans are mostly found in China, Korea, Japan, India, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, and Indonesia, and are not frequently cultivated for commercial purposes. Sword bean pods can reach a length of over a foot and a width of one to two inches. It is grown as a minor vegetable for local use throughout South and Southeast Asia, particularly in India, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. Sword bean is typically planted as an annual vegetable crop because it is a perennial climbing legume. Sword bean is grown for its soft pods, which can be eaten raw or cooked.

SWOT Analysis-Concept

Concept of SWOT

The concept of SWOT surfaced in 1960 as, management tool indicating four dimensions of strength, weakness, opportunity and threat and is widely used in business organizations. It’s use is very common in judging the prospectus of any organization particularly rural projects. It’s four attributes have wider applicability to decide whether to move ahead or not.

Origin of SWOT

SWOT Analysis – Concept, origin and evolution
While working on a research project at the Stanford University sometime around 1960s to 1970s, Albert Humphrey developed an analytical tool to evaluate the strategic plans and find out why corporate planning failed. He coined this technique as SOFT analysis where –
• S stood for what things are Satisfactory at present,
• O denoted what Opportunities can be explored in the future,
• F meant the Faults in the present and
• T signified the Threats that could surface in the future.
While the majority agrees that SOFT is the predecessor of SWOT, some people believe that the concept of SWOT analysis emerged separately and has nothing to do with SOFT.
How SWOT evolved from SOFT?
The first mention of the term SWOT can be traced back to the Long Range Planning seminar held in Zurich in 1964. In this seminar Urick and Orr proposed the concept of SWOT analysis which was derived from SOFT by replacing the F for faults with W for Weaknesses. With its initial promotion in the Britain, the concept soon gained recognition among strategic planners and management consultants the world over. The new interpretation of SWOT, the way it is used these days, differs slightly from that of SOFT.

Strengths
• Poultry farming generates early and regular income and has shorter generation interval.
• Poultry and poultry products constitute an important component of human diet. The consumption is also increasing at a rapid rate due to low fat content, easy availability and cost effectiveness.
• Poultry is the least cost alternative food source next to fish only and produces more animal protein from the same amount of feed. Two eggs provide 160 calories of energy constituting more than 20 percent of the daily requirement of Proteins, Vitamin A, D & B12, Riboflavin, Folic acid, Pantothenic acid, Phosphorus and Iodine along with fat.
• According to nutritional Advisory committee of India, at least half an egg should be made available to an average individual which workout to be 180 eggs/annum. Poultry farming require less area with high and quick return than any other animal husbandry and agriculture activities.
• Good infrastructure like road, rail, ports, airports, reliable electricity power and easily approachable to major cities of adjoining states.

SWOT analysis is the systematic identification of the internal strength and weakness of an organization or enterprise and environmental opportunities and threats. The analysis is based on the assumption that effective strategy maximizes strength and opportunities and simultaneously minimizes its weakness and threats. Entrepreneurial activities require a SWOT before initiation to provide first hand information about feasibility of the enterprise. All SHGs in rural sector are formed for income generation. A variety of enterprises coming up through SHG in rural sector may or may not be successful. SWOT provides basic direction for entrepreneurship at any level for benefit of the practitioners. The SWOT of SHG in tribal area where study was conducted has been analyzed.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis is a strategic planning tool used by organizations to identify and evaluate their internal strengths, weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats. It is divided into four key components

Strengths (internal capabilities that provide an advantage)

Weaknesses (internal limitations that may hinder performance)

Opportunities (external factors that could be leveraged for growth or improvement)

Threats (external challenges that could negatively impact the organization)

By assessing these areas, a company can better understand its competitive position, make informed decisions, and develop strategies to capitalize on opportunities while addressing weaknesses and mitigating potential risks. SWOT analysis is widely used in business, marketing, and project management for strategic planning and decision-making.

Introduction

Strategic planning is how an organisation determines how to allocate its resources to pursue its strategy or direction. Based on an assessment of the internal and external environments within which an organisation operates, strategic management is concerned with developing and implementing an organisation’s long-term goals for its stakeholders.

When it comes to strategic planning and management, the SWOT analysis (or SWOT matrix) is a tool that can be used to determine a company’s competitive advantage by analysing its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Situational assessment or situational analysis is another name. TOWS and WOTS-UP are two other acronyms based on the same components.

Nitrogen is the most important plant nutrient for increasing crop productivity. A few prokaryotic microorganisms are able to fix N2 directly mediated by enzyme nitrogenase. Annual biological nitrogen fixation (Table 96) is estimated to be around 175 million metric tonnes per year of which about 139 million tonnes (79%) are accounted for by terrestrial fixation (Burns and Hardy 1975).

The nitrogen fixers involved are metabolically diverse but the process is similar and depends upon (1) nitrogenase (Nase) enzyme complex (ii) a high energy requirement (ATP) (iii) anaerobic conditions for nitrogenase activity (iv) source of strong reductant.

The symbiotic process is known to be one of the important contributors to the nitrogen cycle both from agricultural and ecological points of view. The soil bacteria of the genus Rhizobium colonizes and forms nodules on the root of leguminous plants such as clover, lucerne (alfalfa), pea, chickpea, pigeonpea, beans, groundnut, Vigna species etc.

The nitrogen uptake in legumes by some unknown process was demonstrated through agronomic experiments by J.B. Boussigault in 1838 which was opposed by Liebig and others. However, Hellriegel and Wilfarth’s experiments (1886-88) clearly showed that the growth of non-leguminous plants, barley, oats etc. was directly proportional to the amount of nitrate supplied while in case of leguminous no such relationship existed and growth of the leguminous plants picked up in some cases after the seedling stage. Beijerinck (1888) isolated the bacterium from the root nodules in pure culture which lead to study their morphological characteristics and physiology.

Introduction and History

Leguminosae/Fabaceae is a superfamily of dicotyledonous plants, which in species diversity is the third largest family of plants accounting for 5% of Earth’s plant biodiversity and make up for more than at least 1% of the total Earth plant biomass. Among these, legume grains and pulses having more than 20 to 30% lysine protein content are cultivated in 145 million ha of land in developing countries. This family is also characterized by presence of specialized tumor like structure formation (nodules) on roots (occasionally on stem as in Sesbania rostrata, Aeschynomene) that is inhabited by microsymbiont gram-negative bacteria (Rhizobium), engaged in fixing atmospheric nitrogen or symbiotic biological nitrogen fixation.