eChapters

I. Scope and Importance of Horticulture
• The total Geographical area of India is 328.73 ha which stands seventh position in the world.
• India’s population is about 138.5 crores as on November 5, 2020 (UN data) which stands second in the world after China.
• Population depends on agriculture is around 55-70%.
• The term Horticulture derived from two Latin words, Hortus - Garden, Cultura - Cultivation.
• Protected enclosures are used to grow vegetables, flowers and ornamental plants etc

Computers: Input and Output Devices

3.1 Input Device

Input devices are the pieces of hardware that allow to enter or input data into

a computer.

Keyboard

• A computer keyboard serves as a data input device.

• A keyboard is a device containing keys, each of which denotes an

alphabet, number, or number instruction that may be served to a computer

to do multiple tasks.

• The keyboard is a significant input device, both computers and laptops

use keyboards to enter commands into the computer.

Mouse

• Mouse is a pointing device.

• The mouse is used to open various files and programs by directly clicking

on the various icons on the system.

• A mouse has three buttons on top and one trackball on the bottom, which

are used to select and move the mouse.

• A touchpad is provided as an alternative for the mouse on laptops, which

aids in mouse pointer movement.

1.1. Origin and distribution

• Originated in Peru, Ecuador, Bolvia of South America and name came from Aztec word Tomato.
• First report from Italy in 1544.
• Leading producers in India - UP, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Haryana, Punjab and Bihar.

1.2. Economic importance

• Rich source of minerals like calcium, sodium, trace elements like copper, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin B complex (thiamine), essential amino acids and healthy organic acids like malic, citric, formic, oxalic and acetic acids.
• Attractive red colour due to lycopene and yellow colour due to carotenes.
• Peculiar flavour due to presence of ethanol, acetaldehyde and volatile flavour in fruit.

Hydrology examines the occurrence, circulation, distribution, and properties of water in the atmosphere and on Earth. Solar energy drives the hydrologic cycle through evaporation, condensation, precipitation, infiltration, runoff, and groundwater movement. Rainfall first satisfies interception, depression storage, evaporation, and infiltration before excess water begins flowing across the surface and into channels. When runoff entering a river exceeds its conveyance capacity, flooding may occur. This chapter explains clouds, precipitation measurement, rain-gauge networks, rainfall consistency, infiltration, runoff mechanisms, hydrographs, unit hydrographs, empirical runoff models, and stage-discharge relationships. These concepts provide the scientific foundation required for analysing floods and designing appropriate control measures.

The vegetables form an essential component of the human diet especially in case of India and some South Asian countries where sizeable population is vegetarian. India ranks second in the production of vegetables after China and occupy 5.993 million hectares area and the total annual production is around 90.83 metric tonnes (Gopalakrishnan, 2007). There is a need of around 5-6 million tones of food to feed 1.3 billion India’ population by 2020 AD. It is an established fact that any attempt at improvement of agricultural production by using new cultivars with the recommended package of practices has invariably resulted in the increase in activity of damage by pests and diseases. Vegetables are more prone to insect-pests and diseases mainly due to their succulence as compared to other crops. The pest problems on vegetables can be more serious because of the favourable conditions which are provided for multiplication by the present methods of cultivation. The major constraints in vegetable production include the extensive crop losses due to increased pest infestation directly or due to viral diseases vectored by insects. The extent of crop losses in vegetables varies with the plant type, location, damage potential of the pest involved and cropping season. The crop losses to the tune of 40 per cent have observed in vegetable crops. The increased demand and limited productivity of local cultivars, led to introduction of high yielding varieties and hybrids. As a result dramatic changes in pest scenario occurred and minor pests became major pests. Indiscriminate use of pesticides has led to severe ecological consequences like destruction of natural enemies, effect on non-target organisms, pesticide residues in vegetables and resistance of the pests to pesticides. The modern pest management is aimed at educating the farmers on various issues of pest management like identification of the pests, natural enemies, and judicious use of pesticides with alternate methods of pest control like cultural, mechanical, biological and behavioural (use of pheromones) management. The strategy for the control of insect-pests on vegetable crops is necessarily to be different from the other crops because of the nature of utilization of vegetables. This is especially true in the case of chemical control. Insecticides which are highly toxic and are known to leave hazardous residues cannot be recommended on vegetables. The vegetable crops have been grouped into summer and winter vegetables depending upon their season of cultivation in majority of areas. The present chapter deals with the insect pests infesting summer and winter vegetables and their possible management options.

Introduction

The Heliantheae are the third-largest tribe in the sunflower family (Asteraceae). With some 190 genera and nearly 2500 recognized species, only the tribes Senecioneae and Astereae are larger. The name is derived from the genus Helianthus, which is Greek for sunflower.

This is one of the large and predominantly flourishing flowering botanical groups occurring in almost all parts of the world. Except for three species in South America, all other Helianthus species are native to North America and Central America i.e., Southwest United States-Mexico area (Heiser, 1976). The common name, “sunflower”, typically refers to the popular annual species Helianthus annuus, or the common sunflower, whose round flower heads in combination with the ligules look like the sun. This and other species, notably Jerusalem artichoke (H. tuberosus), are cultivated in temperate regions and some tropical regions as food crops for humans, cattle, and poultry, and as ornamental plants.

The species H. annuus typically grows during the summer, post summer rainy season and later in post-rainy season too with the peak growth during pre-summer season with temperatures ranging from 28^oC to 35^oC in India.

Domestication of sunflower started around 4,000 years ago in Eastern North America by the native tribes of American continent (Blackman et al., 2011). The current annual oilseed yielding sunflower was cultivated originally by local inhabitant tribes (Weiss, 2000), who used the seed as a source of food. The adaptations in annual sunflower to human cultivation include a dramatic increase in apical dominance, an increase in seed size, the loss of natural seed dispersal and seed dormancy, and the loss of self-incompatibility (Wills and Burke, 2007).

Hybridization is a potent technique to create variability for selection and breaking yield barriers, evolve varieties having built in high potential. The selection of suitable parents for hybridization is one of the most important step in hybridization program. Selection of parents on the basis of phenotypic performance alone is not a sound procedure since phenotypically superior lines may yield poor recombinations in the segregating generations. It is therefore essential that parents are chosen on the basis of their genetic value. Some of the commonly utilized techniques for assessing the genetic value of a genotype are:

16.1 Introduction
According to Howard (2001) the major world crop palms are coconut palm (Cocos nucifera L), African oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) and date palms (Phoenix dactylifera L). Many other palm species provide products for international commerce and also grown as ornamentals. Some palm species are of local or regional importance and have great potential for expanded development and distribution. In general, commercial production of palms regularly starts on or near natural habitats with little agricultural development.

Chemical ecology is the study of ecological interactions between organisms mediated by chemical produced by those organisms. In short it is considered as the ecological functions of the chemicals. An insect, in various stages of its life history, performs various activities like host plant location, host plant selection,  feeding and oviposition, mating, escape from its natural enemies etc. and the chemicals play a crucial role than visual and audio signals. Chemical ecology encompasses the studies of these chemicals based interactions.

4.1. Introduction

Globally, rice is cultivated on about 165 million ha of land, which provides around 787 million tons of paddy annually (FAO, 2023). In Asia, 708 million tons of paddy is produced from nearly 143 million rice-cultivated areas. Rice crop is grown in a wide range of climates, varied soil types, and hydrological situations. Rice is the lone cereal crop that grows well in floods.

The rice habitat can be divided into four groups based on the hydrology of the rice field: irrigated lowland rice (79~80 million ha), rainfed lowland rice (54~55 million ha), upland rice (14~15 million ha), and flood-prone rice (11~12 million ha) (Table 4.1) (Bouman et al., 2006).

The purpose of a sub-surface drainage system is to lower the ground water table and removal of salts beyond the crop root zone. The ground water beyond table may rise due to commonly practiced flood irrigation method, seepage from unlined channels, percolation of rain and runoff water and sub-surface flow from higher areas. Sub-surface drainage consists of drains laid at a specified depth, spacing and grade below the ground surface. The size, spacing and depth of drains depend largely on the soil-water properties viz., infiltration, saturated hydraulic conductivity, drainable porosity; and the requirement of removal of water through drains in certain time period fixed on the basis of rainfall and crop cultivated. The drains are usually placed in a pervious stratum. Suitable filter of coarse sand and gravel may be used when it is placed in a low permeable stratum. Sub-surface drainage serves the important job of removal of concentrated salt solution from the crop root zone particularly in arid and semiarid region.

Advantage of sub-surface drainage system

1. Since sub-surface drainage are underground, no loss of land for cultivation. Some part of the land goes out of use for making drains in surface drainage.

Chapter Overview

In this chapter, we delve into the pivotal role of women in livestock production, particularly in the context of India. Women emerge as the backbone of livestock care, contributing significantly to rural communities’ well-being and the nation’s economy. We explore their diverse and indispensable contributions, from feeding and general management to health and breed management, processing, and marketing. Despite their crucial roles, women face numerous obstacles and constraints in livestock production, including limited access to resources, gender biases, and cultural norms.

Chapter Overview

This chapter provides an in-depth examination of Gender Budgeting in India, exploring its historical development, principles, and the tools used to promote gender-sensitive budgeting. It delves into the key concepts, institutional frameworks, and the necessity for gender budgeting. The tools for deepening gender budgeting, such as the Five-Step Framework and gender-sensitive checklists, are explained in the context of the Livestock sector. Furthermore, it elucidates the importance of valuing unpaid work and the role of gender budgeting in monitoring policy goals.

Nearly 50 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, it is not possible that food production be adequate for their needs. In some areas of food production surplus, it must be brought to the deficit places where peoples live and work and made available at prices they can afford, otherwise many will remain hungry. This is why marketing is a crucial part of any campaign to relieve hunger. Marketing is the means by which food is brought from the place where it is produced to the people who want to eat it.

Marketing can be a very simple process and it can also be very complex. This depends on what must be done to the farmer’s product to get it from the field to the consumer in good conditions, in an acceptable form and to have it ready when the consumer wants.

Marketing is relatively simple in a village community which produces most of what it needs. Here the producer can sell directly to the consumers coming to his house, or he can attract them by displaying his produce in some central open space in the village which then becomes known as ‘the market’. The total volume of the livestock products sold in this way is still very large, especially in the less commercially developed countries. Direct marketing within the villages is sometimes praised because of its low cost, and also because it does not involve any ‘middleman’ between producer and consumer. But, if farmers sell their produce only to the local consumers, and if their land could produce more than they need, there is no way by which they can take advantage of these excess production potentialities. Similarly, if the consumers are only able to eat what is produced locally, which may confine them to a diet that is monotonous, unsatisfying and very expensive too. This is true of many people’s living in isolated areas, which requires much home processing and still has little nutritional value; and of the many others for whom most meals consist of hand-pounded cereals. Hence, this undernourishment on one side and excess production on the other side leads to the development of marketing concept.

Most food legumes have a long history of domestication almost as long as cereals, and during this time they have been subjected to conscious and unconscious selections for better adaptation to environmental condition as well as better seed yield. In general, crops during their ontogeny faces a number of abiotic stress viz., excessive and/or low soil water stress, soil salinity stress, high as well as low temperature stress. It has been well documented that crop yields would be greater in many cropping regions if more water were available. 
Availability of water for agriculture is being challenged increasingly because of growing demand for water from other sectors such as industry, urban use, and for social and environmental purposes. Water stress may conceivably arise either from an insufficient or from an excessive water activity in the plant’s environment. Many physiological characteristics are correlated with the water potential of mesophyll tissue but the correlations are species specific. There is a general hierarchy of sensitivities among general physiological activities. Most sensitive are cell expansion, cell wall synthesis, protochlorophyll formation, and nitrate reduction. Generally turgor pressure is still accepted as the best indicator of water stress in plants. The specific mechanism by which turgor regulate physiological function probably relate to cell walls and membranes. Cell membrane structure, and spatial arrangement of enzyme, transport channels, cellulose synthesis rosettes, and receptor proteins may be dependent on turgor pressure.

Nuclear Disasters

What is NUCLEAR ENERGY or NUCLEAR POWER?

It is the energy released in nuclear fission or nuclear fusion.
Motive power generated by nuclear reactor.
Where atomic energy of a substance get converted in to electrical energy.

The genus Clostridium belongs to the family Clostridiaceae. The genus name was originated from the Greek word ‘kloster’ means spindle, referring to their individual rod shape. Clostridia are gram positive, large, sporulating anaerobic rods (except C. piliforme which is gram negative). At present, there are more than 200 numbers of species under the genus Clostridium. Among them, 15 species can produce potent toxins and are considered as pathogenic for animals and human. The animal pathogenic Clostridia can be classified as neurotoxic, histotoxic and enteric.

Efforts to Mitigate Natural Disaster at National and Global Level

What is A ‘Disaster’?

It as ‘an event that has occurred unexpectedly with destructive consequences’ - (UNOCHA 2005). 
It as ‘a calamitous event resulting in loss of life, great human suffering and distress, and large scale material damage’ - (IFRC2005).
None of the international agencies take animals into account in their definitions

1.1. Origin and distribution

• Also known as balsam pear or bitter cucumber.
• Old world origin and native of tropical Asia, particularly in Indo Burma region
• Widely grown in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, China and tropical Africa
• In India, it is cultivated in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, Assam, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

1.2. Economic importance

• Bitter gourd contains bitter principle (Glucoside) momordicin.
• Important vegetable in South Indian states, particularly in Kerala and grown for immature tuberculate fruits a unique bitter taste
• Fruits are
  • Rich source of vitamins and minerals

1. Seedling management in the nursery

Seedlings of many seed propagated vegetable crops like, tomato, brinjal, chillies, sweet pepper, cauliflower, cabbage, knolkhol, broccoli, Brussels sprout, kale, endive, chicory, celery, lettuce, parsley, onion, etc. are first raised in the nursery beds before transplanted in the main field although, many of these crops like, tomato, sweet pepper, onion, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, etc. are also direct seeded using precision seed drills in the USA, Japan, the Netherlands, Italy and other European countries. Many seed propagated vegetable crops viz., okra, peas, beans, radish, carrot, beet, turnip and all the cucurbits (e.g. bitter gourd, bottle gourd, pumpkin, cucumber, watermelon, muskmelon, snake gourd, sponge gourd, ridge gourd, etc.) are conventionally grown through direct seeding in the main field.

Transplant groups

1. Plants easy to transplant: They form new roots rapidly, put forth shoots rather slowly and absorb water readily e.g. beet, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, Swiss chard, lettuce and tomato.

2. Plants transplanted with moderate ease: This group replace roots and grow shoots a bit slower than the previous group and do not absorb water very efficiently e.g. celery, brinjal, onion, pepper, leek and cauliflower.