eChapters

Origin & Distribution of Cattle

All types of domestic cattle belongs to class Mammalia, subclass Ungulata, order Artiodactyla, suborder Ruminantia, family Bovidae, subfamily Bovinae, tribe Bovini, which includes genus Bos. The aurochs or urus (Bos primigenius) is the probable ancestor of most of the present day Bos taurus and Bos indicus cattle. The humped Bos primigenius namadicus were the forerunner of today’s zebu cattle while humpless Bos primigenius primigenius gave rise to modern European cattle. Both category of cattle possess the same number of chromosomes (2N=60). Other related animals in the Bovini tribe include the gaur cattle (Bos gaurus), banteng (Bos banteng), kouprey (Bos sauveli) of South and East Asia, bison (Bison bison) of North America, European bison (Bison bonasus) and the yak (Poephagus mutus) of central Asia. According to Payne & Hodges (1997), domestication of aurochs (Bos primigenius ) took place first probably on the lower mountain slopes in the region of western Asia known as the ‘fertile crescent’. They suggested that the first domestic cattle were humpless (Bos taurus) Hamitic Longhorn type and were domesticated around possibly 9000 BP (years before the present i.e. 1950). About 2000 years later the humpless (Bos taurus) shorthorn type evolved or was developed in the region and these two types of humpless cattle are believed to the ancestor of Bos taurus. Humped (Bos indicus) zebu cattle were domesticated in the northwest arid areas of the Fertile Crescent around c. 5000 BP.

1.    The term “macroeconomics” has been derived from a Greek word?

(a) MICROS

(b) MIKROS

(c) MAKROS

(d) MACROS

2.    Who coined the term ‘macro economics’?

(a) A. Smith

(b) Samuelson

(c) A. Marshall

(d) Ragner Frish

Nutritional Quality of Edible Oils

Fats improve the taste and flavour of foods. Fatty foods satiate a hungry person fast because fats remain in the stomach for a longer period than either protein or carbohydrate (sugar) foods. Fats also carry essential vitamins like A, D, E and K. They also provide the body with essential fatty acids. Thus, fats have a very important role to play in human nutrition.

Spectrum of Fats and Oils

It is not just the butter and ghee that provide us the necessary fats. Vegetable oils, meat and fish too add fats in our diet. There is an array of vegetable oils available to human beings. They are groundnut, rapeseed, sesame, sunflower, safflower, soybean, niger, cotton seed, coconut, palm and rice bran oils. Ghee(butter fat), however, is the main animal fat utilized widely. The quality and composition of these oils vary as also the preference of people.

13.1 Biosafety

Biosafety is the prevention of large-scale loss of biological integrity, focusing both on ecology and human health. These prevention mechanisms include conduction of regular reviews of the biosafety in laboratory settings, as well as strict guidelines to follow. Biosafety is used to protect from harmful incidents. Many laboratories handling biohazards employ an ongoing risk management assessment and enforcement process for biosafety. Failures to follow such protocols can lead to increased risk of exposure to biohazards or pathogens. Human error and poor technique contribute to unnecessary exposure and compromise the best safeguards set into place for protection. The international Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety deals primarily with the agricultural definition but many advocacy groups seek to expand it to include post-genetic threats: new molecules, artificial life forms, and even robots which may compete directly in the natural food chain.

The pipe network in a drip system consists of a mainline, sub mains, laterals, and distributors. The layout of the pipes depends on the physical factors like shape and size of the area, topography and any other obstacles in the field. In any field there may be the scope of different layout of the pipes. The most economic one should be selected. In general, contour line is followed in laying the laterals in sloping land, sub main length usually be shorten in uphill and equally spaced laterals on either side of a sub main in a flat land provides good layout.

Hydraulic Formulae /Head Losses in Pipes

There are numerous equations for solving the head loss in pipes. The most commonly used are the Darcy-Weisbach, Hazen-William and Scobey’s.

8.1 Introduction

After knowing when to irrigate and how much to irrigate, next important thing is how to irrigate the crop field. Methods of irrigation play a very crucial role in deciding how to irrigate the crop fields since all the crops do not require same methods of irrigation. Depending on the sources of water available for irrigation, type of crop to be irrigated, quantity and quality of water to be applied and other economic considerations, methods of irrigation will vary. Irrigation water may be applied to the crops by flooding it on the field surfaces as surface irrigation, by applying it beneath the soil surface as subirrigation, by spraying it under pressure as sprinkler or overhead irrigation or by applying it in drops around the root zone of the crop as trickle irrigation. The commonly used methods of irrigation are described in schematic diagram as follows:

Summary

Biodiversity (the variety of living things) is fundamental to ecosystem structures and functions, and provide the broad spectrum of goods and services that humans derive from natural systems such as food (e.g. fish), protection from disasters such as cyclones, storms, floods (e.g. mangroves) or maintenance of water quality. Species (biodiversity) respond to climate change either staying or moving out or dying out. For example, the rise of temperature as a consequence of climate change may cause some species to (a) stay in the same environment since they can tolerate to adapt to changes; or (b) may cause some species to move out in a suitable environment (e.g. some species to move pole ward, some up in elevation) or (c) some species (fish) to go deep to increased depths in the oceans to escape heat or warming or (d) may cause some species to die out or get extinct (species with restricted distribution, longer generation time will not be able to migrate or adapt to climate change). A pattern of range shifts such as pole wards and upwards has been documented in hundreds of species of plants and animals and is one of the strongest signals of biotic changes from global warming. These shifts result from two processes: cold-edge expansion and warm-edge contraction. There is now abundant evidence for local extinctions from contractions at the warm edges of species’ ranges or warm edge contraction because the species may have already reached the limits of their climatic tolerance. Investigations conducted reveals that many terrestrial and aquatic species are shifting their geographic ranges in response to rapid changes in temperature and precipitation regimes. For example, many terrestrial organisms are currently shifting in latitude or elevation in response to changing climate. It has been estimated that plants and animals have recently shifted to higher elevations at a median rate of 11.0 m per decade, and to higher latitudes at a median rate of 16.9 km per decade.

Table 1: Descriptive statistics of the socio-economic and communication characteristics of the respondents in terms of Range (Minimum and Maximum), Mean, Standard Deviation (SD) and Coefficient of Variation (CV) of Alluvial Zone in West Bengal

Table 1 Represents the distribution of variables in terms of range i.e. maximum and minimum values, mean, standard deviation and coefficient of variation for alluvial zone of West Bengal.

It has been found that for the independent variable age (x₁), the range lies between 82 and 27 years, where the oldest respondent is of 82 years and the youngest respondent being 27years old. The mean value of the age of the respondents in this study was found to be 51.49 years with a standard deviation of 12.42 in the dataset. Coefficient of variation for this variable was found to be 24.14 per cent, which indicates a high level of consistency in the distribution.

Bio-fertilizers, as the name indicates, are the fertilizers of biological origin (Gupta, 2012). In strict sense, real bio-fertilizers are green manures and organics - materials of biological origin which are added to supply plant nutrients present in them. However, in restricted scope, the term ìbio-fertilizersî or ìmicrobial inoculantsî are preparations of living organisms in alone or in combination, which may help in increasing crop productivity by way of fixing atmospheric Use of Bio-Fertilizers in Sustainable Agriculture 175 nitrogen in soils, solubilizing of insoluble plant nutrients, stimulating plant growth or decomposing of plant residues. 

1. Introduction

Pear is among the oldest of the world’s fruit crops, figuring in both Bible and the tales of Homer. They are by far the most important of the deciduous tree fruits, are widely grown in temperate and increasingly, in tropical regions, and figure prominently in world trade. The fruit is primarily grown for the fresh fruit market, which is much more remunerative than that for processing.

Pear (Pyrus communis, Rosaceaea family), is a deciduous fruit, grown under a wide variety of climatic regimes, ranging from cold dry temperature hilly conditions to warm humid subtropical conditions. It is grown in many places of India like Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Utter Pradesh. Sandy pear plants were brought to Amritsar by travellers from China who settled at Harsha Chinna village near Amritsar about 2,500 years ago. The Kashmir valley represents one of the major Pear (Pyrus communis.L.) growing areas of the world. Pear was introduced in India from China. The time at which Pear was introduced to Kashmir is not precisely known, however Yukteshwar Kumar writes in his book “A History of SinoIndian Relations” that peach and pear came to India during the early years of the Eastern Han period (25 AD to 220 AD). This pre historic fruit has been under cultivation both in Europe and Asia for about 3000 years (Hedrick et al., 1921). Between 16^th and 18^th centuries, many European writers travelling Kashmir noted fantastic royal gardens of the Mughals, mentioning the abundance of peach, pear, plum and cherry trees, with fountains spouting cold, icy water. Pear (Pyrus communis. L), originating from the German word ‘peer’ meaning fruit, is a fascinating fruit steeped in rich history. This fruit is known as ‘tang’ in Kashmiri language. Low chill requiring pears are being cultivated in plains of North India. Cultivars requiring high chilling hours (900-1000) are cultivated at higher hills of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Majority of the Pear production is actually limited to Kashmir however, low chilling cultivars grow in subtropical regions.

Proteins are large biological molecules, or macromolecules, consisting of one or more chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within living organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, replicating DNA, responding to stimuli, and transporting molecules from one location to another. Proteins differ from one another primarily in their sequence of amino acids, which is dictated by the nucleotide sequence of their genes, and which usually results in folding of the protein into a specific three-dimensional structure that determines its activity. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain derived from the condensation of amino acids. The individual amino acid residues are bonded together by peptide bonds and adjacent amino acid residues. The sequence of amino acid residues in a protein is defined by the sequence of a gene, which is encoded in the genetic code. In general, the genetic code specifies 20 standard amino acids; however, in certain organisms the genetic code can include selenocysteine and, in certain archaea-pyrrolysine. Shortly after or even during synthesis, the residues in a protein are often chemically modified by post translational modification, which alters the physical and chemical properties, folding, stability, activity, and ultimately, the function of the proteins. Sometimes proteins have non-peptide groups attached, which can be called prosthetic groups or cofactors. Proteins can also work together to achieve a particular function, and they often associate to form stable protein complexes.

Like other biological macromolecules such as pollysaccharides and nucleic acids, proteins are essential parts of organisms and participate in virtually every process within cells. Many proteins are enzymes that catalyse biochemical reactions and are vital to metabolism. Proteins also have structural or mechanical functions, such as actin and myosin in muscle and the proteins in the cytoskeleton, which form a system of scaffolding that maintains cell shape. Other proteins are important in cell signalling, immune responses, cell adhesion, and the cell cycle. Proteins are also necessary in animals’ diets, since animals cannot synthesize all the amino acids they need and must obtain essential amino acids from food. Through the process of digestion, animals break down ingested protein into free amino acids that are then used in metabolism.

C    :    Cytosine.
C domains    :    The constant regions of the polypeptide chains of immunoglobulin molecules are made up of one or more constant domains or C domains of similar structure; each immunoglobulin chain also has a single variable or V domain.

Nitrogen ranks fourth element in cell composition after C, H and O. It forms main components of amino acids, the building blocks of peptides and proteins. Besides, it is present in the genetic material of cell as well as in the chlorophyll and cell wall in the form of chitin and mucopeptides. Plant growth in soil is often limited by less supply of nitrogen, therefore a major nutrient limiting factor in crop production. About 26 x 10⁶ Mg N is globally applied to soil each year to enhance crop productivity.

Appendix-'C'    :    Damage Prevention and Rehabilitation by Retrofitting
    
Appendix-'D'    :    Dos and Don'ts While Constructing Buildings
    
Case Study    :    Bhuj Earthquake 26th January, 2001
            Eyjafjallajoekull (Iceland) Volcano - 2010

P    :    Phosphate.

p    :    Pico (10^-12).

P&S    :    Permanent and stationary.

PO    :    Per oral; by mouth (see also IV; IP;).

PA    :    Postero-anterior; pulmonary artery.
   
PAC    :    P1-derived artificial chromosome.

Recent years have seen a rapid increase in the application of the various techniques of molecular, cytogenetical and serological approaches to problems in plant Nematology. The application of these approaches has been considered to problems of genetic variation and classical taxonomy. Two principal approaches are available. Firstly the use of “random” techniques which aim to sample the entire genome of the animaIs or populations of interest and which are mostly used in studies of genetic variation. Secondly “non-random “ techniques which target defined regions of the genome such as particular genes or gene products and are most frequently used in identification to species or sub-species level. The defined region ofthe genome may be the ribosomal genes, the mitochondrial genome or a conserved nuc1ear gene. Whilst analysis of these regions may allow information about taxonomic relationships to be gathered, focusing on one region of the genome imposes certain limitations on the experimenter.

In recent years the importance of VAM fungi for plant growth in most soils has been accepted and acknowledged by soil chemists, agronomists, horticulturists and farmers. Ever since it was shown that VAM could increase nutrient uptake and water uptake from soil in plants, researchers have been trying to extend and manipulate this effect of mycorrhiza in improving the growth and productivity in various groups of plants. Mycorrhizasts of the country have also explored the possibility of utilizing this tool for improving the performance of various crops including cereals, millets, pulses, vegetables, oilseeds and fruit crops. In addition, they have tried to explore the possibility of utilizing this biotool also for improving the growth of various types of trees including forest trees. Following account is related to the work done by the mycorrhizasts of the country on the effect of VA mycorrhiza on the growth and productivity of various groups of plants including cultivated crops.

A. Mixing and Homogenization

1. I.ntroduction to Mixing and Homogenization

In the food industry, mixing and homogenization are fundamental procedures that are essential to the production of a wide range of food items. To produce the desired qualities and final result with uniformity and consistency, various ingredients are blended. Ensuring product quality, stability, and customer happiness are contingent upon these processes.

Importance of Mixing and Homogenization

Mixing and homogenization are paramount for several reason

11.1 Control of Diarrhea in Animals Using Traditional Remedies

1. Strychnos potatorum Leaves: In Dahod, Gujarat, approximately 100g of kantas (Strychnos potatorum) leaves are crushed and soaked in water. This mixture is given to the ailing animals for three days (Sitaram, 1997).

2. Ventilago denticulata and Syzygium cumini Mixture: In Bori, Shahera, a mixture of asul (Ventilago denticulata) roots and jamun (Syzygium cumini) bark is crushed and administered with water to the suffering animal. This treatment typically cures diarrhea within 2-3 days. Asul is a creeper found year-round in hedgerows, and jamun is a common tree (Dalsukhbhai, 1993).

3. Decoction of Soymida febrifuga: In Shahera, Gujarat, fresh leaves of royan (Soymida febrifuga) are crushed and soaked in water for one hour. A 100-150 ml dose of this concoction is given to the animal, which usually brings relief within 24 hours. This remedy has a long history in the region (Dalsukhbhai, 1993).

4. Ficus hispida: In Panchmahal, Gujarat, roots of dedhumari (Ficus hispida) are washed, crushed, and soaked in water for one hour. The mixture is then filtered through cloth, and 100-200g of the filtrate is administered to the animal. The treatment typically takes effect within a day and completely cures the animal in about 2-3 days. Many farmers use this method, although they may also consult veterinary experts (Baria, 1993).

5. Umra Bark and Banana Plant: During the monsoon, diarrhea in animals is treated using umra bark and banana (Musa Paradisiaca) plant sap. About 500g of umra bark is pounded and mixed with 500ml of banana stem juice. The mixture is filtered, and the filtrate is given to the affected animal. One hour later, the animal is fed 250ml of groundnut oil, resulting in a cure within a day or two (Valsad, Gujarat) (Patel, 1996).

Introduction

In the thirst of modernization and industrialization man has contributed pollution to the life and ecology of plants, animals and microbes. Increased demand for food and fiber has lead to the chemicalization of agriculture and we have reached on such a stage that modern agriculture is dependent on high yielding varieties, which can only be grown under the influence of fertilizers and pesticides. Pesticides are the man made chemicals which are being used to produce enough cheap food. In India, 90,000 MT of technical grade pesticides are used annually to control pests and plant diseases. The pesticides are classified as insecticides, fungicides, weedicides, herbicides, nematodicides and rodenticides; of which insecticides constitutes 77% of the total pesticides used in different agricultural and animal husbandry practices and in public health operations.