eChapters

Downy mildew is refered to a condition of plant disease where the fungal growth and infection appears on the dorsal side of the leaf surface while the corresponding ventral side of the leaf shows faint yellowish color. It is also refered to the fungus which causes this disease.The word mildew in Latin language means mil + dew i.e honey like dews.The fungal growth on plant surface resembles to the milky dews in the beginging which turn to golden brownish honey like dews in later stage. Subsequently the affected areas turn grayish brown and dry. Besides the infection of leaves, the fungus also infects the fruits. The downy mildew infection on fruits causes the deformities on the affected fruits. The infection of the downy mildew pathogen on some of the cereals like pearlmillet causes the symptoms like green ear disease .

Downy mildew pathogens can cause major damage in the nursery, in greenhouse, in field crops and in landscape in the form of leaf spots, blights, and distortions with mildew growth. Downy mildews are primarily foliage blights with mildew growth of the fungus on affected portion. The fungus attack and spread rapidly in young, tender green leaf, twig, and fruit tissues. The fungal development are severe when a film of water is present on the plant tissues and the relative humidity in the air is high during cool or warm, but not hot, periods. Downy mildews can cause severe losses in short periods of time. Downy mildews often cause rapid and severe losses of young crop plants still in the seedbed or in the field. They often destroy from 40 to 90% of the young plants or young shoots in the field, causing heavy or total losses of crop yields. The severity of loss depends on the prolonged presence of wet, cool weather during which the downy mildews fungus sporulate profusely, cause numerous new infections, and spread into and rapidly kill young succulent tissues.

Despite widespread occurrence and its potency to inflict heavy causalities and damage to economy, generalizations could not be made to define “drought” – leave alone characterization, development of predictive model and common mitigation measures. Regional variation, be it definition or symptoms or causative factors or consequences and mitigation measures is the hallmark of drought. This chapter is an attempt to present a review on characteristics of drought for the benefit of devising mitigation and reclamation measures.

INTRODUCTION

“Drought” denotes the meteorological, agricultural, environmental, climatic, social, economic and political consequences of a gap between the water availability and demands for the needs of domestic, irrigational, industrial, commercial and recreational consumption in an area over extended period of time. As these demands vary from region to region and depend on too many parameters such as quantum of rainfall, geological and soil characteristics, land use, population, economic activity, climatic conditions, population and culture, drought conditions of an area may not have characteristics of some other region.

Introduction

Plant pests have been a part of the man’s environment, since ages. Traditional agriculture which included diverse crops and indigenous crop management practices provided little opportunity for the pests to build up and spread rapidly (Smith and Allen,1954). Crop production is constantly threatened by increasing difficulties in controlling insect pests, which are a major impediment to improved livelihoods of the poor farmers. However, in the quest for increasing food production for the growing population, use of pesticides became a norm in crop management. Pesticides became an integral part of the process owing to losses from weeds, diseases and pests reducing the harvestable produce. Use of pesticides along with high yielding varieties, irrigation and improved seed did result in increased productivity. But the rampant use of these chemicals, under the adage, “if little is good, a lot more will be better” has played havoc with human and other life forms.

Introduction

Indian agriculture is in a phase of transition from subsistence to high-tech agribusiness. This has ushered in an era where entrepreneurship is viewed as a strategic intervention in rural development. As a result, promotion of rural enterprises has gained great significance as an instrument for improved farm earnings, employment and women empowerment. It implies development of agriculture through farm diversification, value addition and development of agro-processing industries that provides autonomy, independence and reduced need for social support to the farmers. Improved farm-industry linkages along with great export potential will be added advantages. In this development scenario, agriculture, specifically high value horticultural crops like fruits, vegetables, spices, flowers, plantation crops, medicinal and aromatic plants among others that ensure maximum returns to the growers with multiple scopes for value addition hold great promise. In fact, horticultural crops become a necessary condition for improving the living standards of farmers and ensuring nutritional security of the nation. The concept of nutritional security goes beyond food security to include adequate availability of micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals in addition to calorie and protein needs of the people supplied through food grains. Therefore, the spectacular increase in food grain production and a reasonable overall agricultural performance has failed to eradicate malnutrition as can be inferred from Table 1. It indicates that the Global Hunger Index (GHI), a more comprehensive tool used to measure and track hunger, ranks India (97 out of 118 developing countries) in the category of serious hunger behind Bangladesh (90/118). More disturbing are the rates of growing malnutrition among Indian households. As such, nutritional security becomes a more relevant indicator of food security as we move up the development ladder

This chapter introduces the fundamental concepts and processes that determine the structure and functioning of forest ecosystems. It examines forest ecosystem structure, different forest ecosystem types, community ecology, succession, population ecology, energy flow, and nutrient cycling. The chapter also addresses forest soil ecology, biodiversity, disturbances, climate change, and restoration ecology. Modern tools and sustainable forest management approaches are included to connect ecological principles with practical forest management. By integrating ecosystem processes with conservation and management perspectives, the chapter provides a foundation for understanding forest dynamics and maintaining healthy and resilient forest ecosystems.

Mountains play a vital role in sustaining about 10 per cent of the world population directly as they are the major source of water supply and majority of rivers originate from these ecosystems thus sustain the life of people residing in the plains. In India hill and mountainous areas are vastly distributed all over the country with the major mountain ranges in the Himalayas and the Western Ghats. The Himalayas are extending in 2500 km length and 250 to 400 km breadth (Khanday et al. 2004). They are further classified in three major categories i.e Western Himalayas (including Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh), Central Himalayas (including eight hill districts of Uttarakhand), North Eastern Himalayas (including Sikkim, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Tripura, Union Territory of Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, hill areas of Assam and Darjeeling district of West Bengal). Whereas Western Ghats also known as Sahyadri including border of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu .

History

Pauling and his colleagues coined the phrase "molecular disease" in 1949, based on their finding that a single amino acid shift in the β-globin chain causes sickle cell anemia, which is characterized primarily by repeated bouts of acute pain due to vessel occlusion. In theory, their discoveries laid the groundwork for molecular diagnoses, though the major breakthrough came many years later. At the time, when molecular biology was only rapidly growing, providing molecular diagnostic services was unthinkable and practically impossible. In the early days of recombinant DNA technology, many scientists from different f ields collaborated to provide the first seedlings of molecular diagnostics.

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an outline on the patenting system prevailing in India. 

INTRODUCTION

Ideas and knowledge are increasingly important parts of trade. Most of the value of new medicines and other high technology products lies in the amount of invention, innovation, research, design and testing involved. Hence, protection of such values is paramount. This paper details how these values are protected in India.

Introduction

R language is a popular and versatile tool for hydrological data analysis and visualization, offering several powerful packages for handling and analyzing hydrological parameters such as river flow, precipitation, groundwater levels, and water quality parameters. R language provides a wide range of statistical functions for hydrological parameter analysis, including time-series analysis, frequency analysis, trend analysis, and regression analysis. Moreover, R’s powerful graphics capabilities make it possible to create high-quality and customizable visualizations of hydrological data. In addition to its statistical and graphical capabilities, R also offers a wide range of packages for data manipulation and cleaning, making it a powerful tool for preprocessing hydrological data. R’s ability to handle and analyze large datasets also makes it well-suited for processing and analyzing large hydrological datasets. Furthermore, R has a strong community of developers and users who regularly contribute new packages and tools, providing a constantly evolving stage for hydrological analysis. Overall, R is a versatile and powerful tool for hydrological data analysis and visualization, offering numerous capabilities and resources for informed decision-making in water resources management and related fields.

This chapter reviews the published information on tsunami and attempts to characterize tsunamigenic sediments in terms of their microfossil content. Tsunamisare long-period waves generated by vertical displacements of marine watercolumn due to earthquakes, volcanic explosion and landslides. These waves can exceed heights of 25 meters (in shallow water) and lengths upto 100km with a velocity of more than 1000km/hour. Even at this magnitude, they are undetectable in deeper waters owing to very low wave height which in turn reduces significantly the response time, causing sudden havoc along coasts. They can cause flooding of coastal areas and affect areas thousands of kilometers away from their point of origin. These characteristics of tsunami imprint ensuing sediments with unique assemblage of microfossils.

INTRODUCTION

Shallow water progressive waves with very large wavelength and long duration caused by the rapid displacement of ocean water are called “tsunami”. Tsunami is a sudden non-meteorologically induced impulse in water regardless of size. Tsunamis are formed by submarine tectonic activity more often due to earthquakes and less frequently due to volcanic eruption, landslides near the coast, meteor impact and nuclear explosions.

The velocity of the tsunami varies and depends on many parameters such as bathymetry, height of the originating wave, initial pressure changes in the sea, etc. and can travel at a speed of more than 1000 km/hr. At the place of origin (directly above the epicentre of submarine earthquake or any other causative factor), the wavelength may be upto few tens to several hundred kilometres but the wave height is often less than one metre only. Since the velocity is proportional to the depth of the water column, it gets reduced to few tens of kilometres as the tsunami approaches the coast. However, the wave height increases significantly reaching 100 m in extreme cases. As a result, the tsunami strikes the coast with massive force. The effect is colossal in islands with low relief. The tsunami waves appear as flooding with water rushing inside the land more violently and with great force towards a river course. In several cases, when the tsunami arrives, the water level in the sea may drop significantly and the waters receding several hundred metres come back with great speed drubbing the coastal lands doubly from both the directions. Though an event of short duration in terms of geological history, tsunami deposits, owing to their higher rate of deposition and other salient characteristics, find place in stratigraphic records. This chapter is an attempt to review the characteristics of tsunami and tsunamigenic sediments, to find out the ability of microfossil content of such sediments for characterization and to identify tsunami deposits in stratigraphic records.

Introduction

The vast natural and cultural resources of India contribute to the country's abundant growth. Taking advantage of this, the tourist industry in India has experienced one of the most rapid growth rates seen anywhere in the world. The travel and tourism industry accounts for a significant portion of overall economic growth around the world, and over the past nine years, India's rate of economic expansion has consistently been higher than that of the whole economy. In 2019, the sector expanded at a pace of 3.5 percent, which was much higher than the world GDP growth rate of 2.5 percent. The tourist industry has a considerable bearing on India's overall economic performance. India is ranked as one of the top ten tourist destinations in the world. The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) disclosed information indicating that the Indian tourism sector contributed INR 194 billion to India's GDP in 2019. Additionally, the tourism industry in India supported 87.5 million jobs, which accounted for 12.75 percent of total employment. However, for the past two years, due to COVID-19, the tourism sector worldwide, as well as in India, has faced huge losses and is in distress. So, it’s the right time to focus on developing tourism under different wings.

INTRODUCTION

Modern agriculture relies more on monoculture, which is highly energy intensive and has a narrow genetic base. This has disturbed the normal ecosystem and sometime results in disease epidemics. The problem becomes much more serious in case of soil borne pathogens, as soil medium is a highly complex living system and is also the habitat of many micro organisms including the pathogens whose activities are influenced by interaction in it. Many serious plant diseases are associated with soil-borne plant pathogens, which cause root rot, crown rot, damping off, blights, fruit decay and wilts in field and horticultural crops. Soil borne plant pathogens, which are most tricky and challenging ones, cause sustainable economic loss. Many important fungal pathogens reside in the soil and infect roots of crops often causing significant yield losses. Soil-borne diseases result from a reduction in biodiversity of soil organisms.

Introduction

Milk is regarded as the “ideal food” as it contains nutrients necessary for both newborns and adults (Azad & Ahmed, 2016). It is high in protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. Unfortunately, milk is easily adulterated all over the world for several reasons, including a gap between supply and demand, the inherent nature of milk which can imbibe many adulterants that are difficult to identify, the low purchasing power of consumers, an insufficient share of the organized sector in the dairy business, and, most importantly, a lack of efficient and rapid methods for detecting adulterants (Ellis et al., 2012; Moore et al., 2012).

ABSTRACT

The state of Jammu and Kashmir, especially the valley of Kashmir, has a rich diversity of traditional agroforestry models, which are in existence since time immemorial. Agroforestry is based primarily on natural occurrence of trees. The paper highlights the traditional agroforestry systems prevailing in the valley. A number of studies have been undertaken since the inception of AICRP-AF in University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Kashmir. Besides design and diagnostic survey, studies on evaluation of twelve multipurpose tree species identified during design and diagnostic survey and designing of various agroforestry models for different problematic sites have been undertaken. These studies have been tested over a period of time and have been found suitable for different sites. The out come of these studies and the recommended agroforestry systems are given in this paper.

INTRODUCTION

Land is a vital natural resource and is the basis of our existence. Due to mounting pressure of increasing human and livestock population it has been subjected to various pressures and misuse resulting in degradation of land and loss of biodiversity. Management of land is therefore, of paramount importance so that increasing needs of human and livestock are met on sustainable basis. During the last three decades agroforestry has been recognised as a distinct land management system, which is destined to play an important role in socio-economic transformation of marginal lands into more productive agrarian economy. India has a long tradition of agroforestry, farmers and land owners in different parts of the country integrate a variety of woody perennials in their crop and livestock production fields, depending upon the agro climatic conditions and local needs. Most of these practices are, however, location specific and information on these is very scanty, therefore, benefits have remained vastly under exploited and un extrapolated to other sites.

Introduction

Aquaculture has been shown to offer high potential to fill the gap between supply and demand for fish and fish products to mitigate the problems of malnutrition with ever increasing world population. Globally, aquaculture has been growing rapidly in the last decade, approximately at 10-15% per year. The total aquaculture production, which was 26.7 million metric tonnes in 1996 increased to 37.5 million metric tonnes in 2001, in which tropical countries have been particularly contributing well, with the Asian component exceeding 80% (Ayyappan and Jayanthi, 2004).

The country has varied and enormous aquatic resources (coastline: 8041kms, EEZ: 2.02 million sq. km., river & canals: 171334 km., brackish water area: 1.422 million ha., reservoirs: 2.050 million ha., ponds: 2.855 million ha., beels & oxbow lakes: 0.788 million ha) (Gopakumar, 2000). The North-Eastern region of India is endowed with rich diversity of aquatic and biotic resources, which needs judicious and scientific exploitation for diversification of farm practices so as to mitigate the problem of demand and supply of quality food.

Introduction

Citrus spp. grown in almost all the states of India. Citrus fruit, consisting of mandarin oranges (Citrus reticulata Blanco), sweet orange (Citrus sinensis Osbeck) and lime (Citrus aurantifolia Swingle) are grown commercially in tropical, sub-tropical, arid, irrigated and mountainous regions in varying soil and weather condition. The citrus tree on the whole do well in dry climate, with a rainfall between 75 and 125 cm but certain species such as pummel and certain mandarin oranges thrive in heavy rainfall areas of Konkan, Assam and Coorg. It is grown almost all kinds of soil, varying from heavy black soil to shallow open soils. A hard substratum or a sticky impervious layer is very injurious. Soils having a high water table should be avoided. Although the citrus industry in India has faced many challenges, there has been a consistent increase in area and production owing to the awareness for sustained production (Table 1).

Introduction

Modern intensive livestock and poultry production has achieved phenomenal gains in the efficient and economical production of high quality and safe animal products and by-products. Furthermore, the overall performance of livestock can be increased by improving nutrients utilization, health status, fertility and efficiency of production. The use of feed additives has been an important part of achieving efficient livestock production. Feed additives are non-nutritive substances, preparations and micro-organisms that are added to animal feed to improve productive, reproductive and health performances. Any substance is considered as a feed additive when, not having a direct utilization as nutrient, is included at an optimum concentration in diet to exert a positive action over the animal health status or the dietary nutrient utilization. Hutjens (1991) defined feed additives as a group of substances that can cause a desired animal response in a non-nutrient role, such as pH shift, growth, or metabolic modifier. Feed additives are added deliberately to animal feed which may favourably influences characteristics of the animal feed, feed intake, gastro-intestinal flora, digestibility of the animal feeds, animal production, health, fertility and characteristics of animal products. Because of their chemical nature as active principles, additives are generally included in very small proportions in diet.

1.1 Introduction

Irrespective of caste, creed, culture, sex, age or religion people like garden. A well-maintained garden serves as lungs of the city or locality as it is a prime source of plenty of oxygen and people enjoy the surrounding and feel happy by fresh air. In holy books of Hindu religion, the importance of plants as well as gardens are explained very beautifully. In the holy Bible it is mentioned that Adam and eve lived in garden. In Quran it is explained as the paradise on earth. So, scriptures of all religions explain about gardens. It shows gardens and plants are closely related to human from the origin of human belief.

Introduction
Wide range of industrially important products such as antibiotics, vitamins, enzymes, polymers, amino acids, biofuels are produced by microbes in extremely small quantities. Using microbial strains that generate an elevated amount of the intended product is a prerequisite for effective biotechnological procedures at the industrial scale. But since this isn’t an intrinsic feature of the chosen microorganism, changes to their genetic makeup may help to navigate this. Therefore, in order to overproduce the target metabolite and increase process efficiency, industrially relevant microorganisms are exposed to a range of treatments employing physical, chemical, or genetic methods. Thus, microbial strain improvement is the process of improving the biosynthetic capacities of microorganisms to generate the desired product in greater quantities.
Recycling resources and promoting sustainable development have grown in importance in recent years. Cosmetics, food, fuels, lubricants, plastics, drinks, fibres, and medications are just a few of the goods that are being biosynthesised due to the growing popularity of biological production of commercially significant metabolites (Kaur et al., 2012). The rising bioeconomy’s success hinges on our capacity to produce high-performing strains efficiently and economically. One successful strain engineering strategy is the Design–Build– Test–Learn (DBTL) framework. The strain engineering process must be viewed from the perspective of optimising the entire cycle rather than just increasing productivity at each stage, if strain development time and cost is to drastically cut down. We suggest a strategy that incorporates all four phases of the DBTL cycle and leverages the latest developments in phenotyping techniques, high-throughput genome engineering, computational design, and machine learning tools to forecast strain scale-up efficiency. By substituting sustainable alternatives made from renewable feedstock for petroleum-based products and ingredients derived from animals or wild-harvested plants, microbial biomanufacturing of chemicals, materials and biomolecules promises to lower greenhouse gas emissions, enhance land use and promote sustainability. But doing so necessitates creating reliable and effective industrial strains that can generate a variety of goods at reasonable costs. Enhancing the effectiveness of the strain engineering process is necessary to lower development cost, time in order to take advantage of market potential in all bioeconomy industries.
Over the past few decades, technical advancements in genome engineering have significantly boosted our capacity to engineer biological systems. The strain engineering process has been significantly sped and enhanced by synthetic biology methods like as genome editing using CRISPR (clustered

Process of life of an organism is defined, driven and depicted by its genetic constitution, or the genome. A genome is a collection of genetic material present in the cell as nuclear or organelle DNA. To be precise, it is the sum of all single copy genetic materials present in the cellular subcompartments. Thus a diploid organism having two copies of each chromosome contains genetic material constituting two copies of the genome, while a gamete of the same organism contains single copy of the same. Organelle genome is shared by chloroplast and mitochondria. In these two organelle genetic material is present in single copy per organelle, although many copies of organelle ensures that a cell harbours many copies of mitochondrial or plastid genome. Unraveling the structure and function of the genome is, therefore, the central objective of biological science. Technologies that would help to understand the basis of genetic, biochemical and physiological processes are pivotal to execute the knowledge for the betterment of mankind and environment.