eChapters

Demand for fodder in intensive livestock farming necessitates the fodder seed production in all the livestock and fodder farms for their own use and sale to needy. In the recent past, fodder seed production is also becoming commercial activity of farmers as the income is promising. Since, there are number of new varieties of fodder are coming to the market, demand for their seed is also encouraging to produce the same commercially. Considering this, the farm managers should aware of fodder seed production technologies for cost effective and quality fodder seed production.

1. Introduction

Extrusion of foods is an emerging technology for the food industries to process and market a large number of products of varying size, shape, texture and taste. Extrusion cooking of cereals is becoming more adaptive due to its various advantages over the traditional food processing techniques (White, 1994). Nowadays the extrusion of food is of major importance in the food-processing sector and it is the only process, which covers a wide range of food products such as ready to eat (RTE) breakfast cereals, snack foods, baby foods etc. Elaborate scientific research, technological development and engineering design, which have been done in this field so far, have led to large-scale industrial production. 

Introduction

In agriculture, Knowledge and decision-making capacity determine how production factors like soil water and capital are utilized in judicious manner. Agricultural Extension System remains in central position for formulating and disseminating knowledge including hands on training to the farmers. Realizing the scope and importance of integrated working of inter relationship between research, education and extension functions, the ICAR established a section of extension education at its head quarter in 1971 which was later on strengthen and renamed as Division of Agricultural Extension. Extension Education plays an important role in most of the Agricultural Development project. Moreover, Agricultural Extension is part of system of factors which influence farmer’s decision. It includes agricultural researchers, political authorities, farmer’s organization, non-govt. organizations, farmers training centre and media. These actors assume the functions of research, information dissemination, training and so on. The primary goal of agricultural extension is to assist farming families in adopting their production and marketing strategies to rapidly changing social, political and economic condition so that they can, in the long term, shape their lives according to their personal preferences and those of community.

Our country today is considered independent. We have the freedom to live by our choices, and there is no discrimination between women and men. Nowadays, women and men get equal opportunities to earn their livelihoods. Women’s work is restricted to the households and jobs outside the home to contribute to the family’s economy. As industrialization occurs, the demand for labour and employees is also increasing. This has created opportunities for both women and men to work equally.

Extended Summary

Kiwifruit is recent crop introduction tohorticulture practices in Mid-Himalayan statesin India such as, Himachal Pradesh and J&K in the North-West and Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland in the North-Eastern Himalayas.Over past few years this fruit has attainedimmense popularity and among consumers due to its nutritional value, while also it has gained appeal among small and marginal farmers owing to its high benefit-cost ratio,particularly through Hi-Tech cultivation techniques.

Kiwifruit,also known as Chinese gooseberry (Actinidia chinensis Patch) is believed to have originated in China,although it gained popularity in New Zealand. In India, Kiwi was first introduced in Lal Bagh at Bengaluru,however,it was soon observed that the fruit could be cultivated well only inthe semi-temperate climate of Himachal Pradesh, around1963.

Executive summary

The ITK system had been developed by the indigenous communities based on their experiences, continuous improvement through informal experimentation and transfer of such knowledge to next generations. The tried and tested rich ITK pertaining to agriculture, livestock and other allied sectors had been interwoven with the socio-cultural and traditional practices followed by them. Since time immemorial indigenous communities had been applying ITK in animal husbandry to increase milk production, fertility, retention of placenta, breeding, prolapsed, care for the young stock and preparation of indigenous livestock products. ITKs are often adapted according to the local culture and traditions, needs, and environment; they are very dynamic and continuously changing, and lay emphasis on minimizing the risks rather than maximizing profits. Indigenous knowledge of livestock rearing is often “tacit” and not necessarily expressed in the conventional form of scientific documentation. The origin and evolution of indigenous technical knowledge (ITK) in India has been reported since time immemorial. Since then, the knowledge, belief, skills and practices pertaining to diagnosis, treatment and management of animal and human diseases are imprinted and carried to future generations. In the light of evolution, the practice has come to limelight as an alternative low cost solution to conventional western medicine and readily practiced by ordinary farmers. 

Pure-breeding

Mating purebred individuals of the same breed. The progeny share the same genetic make-up. The primary goal of pure-breeding is to identify and propagate superior genes for use in commercial production, primarily through crossbreeding programmes, as well as to identify and propagate better females for the preservation of precious genetic material. Therefore, crossbreeding will be futile unless superior purebred individuals are used.

Poultry in general and duck in particular are not free from diseases though they are far more cold-hardy and healthier than the chickens. Infectious agents are not the only cause of diseases in poultry. However, it can be affected by a wide range of diseases that is caused by the non-infectious agents and it can range from cases of cannibalism to various nutritional related diseases or disorders. Unlike the infectious diseases which tends to affect a whole litter, non-infectious diseases may however be sometime confined to a single bird.

Non infectious diseases can be basically categorized into subgroups like –

Introduction

Agricultural and Animal husbandry extension continues to be in transition worldwide. Governments and international agencies are advancing structural, financial and managerial reforms to improve extension. Decentralization, pluralism, cost sharing, cost recovery, participation of stakeholders in development initiatives and the decisions and resources that affect them - these are some of the elements in extension’s current transition.

Public sector extension was severely attacked in the 1980s for not being relevant, for insufficient impact, for not being adequately effective, for not being efficient and, sometimes, for not pursuing programmes that foster equity. In the context of meeting the holistic needs of increasing agricultural production in a sustainable manner in India, agricultural extension has a crucial role to play. Reforms in the system envisaged an extension service which is more broad-based and holistic in content and scope and beyond agricultural technology transfer.

Women have been seen as necessary as a man. The status of the women and the work progress of the women have been seen as a nation’s overall progress. Without the penetration of women in socio-economic and political activities, the country is considered to stagnate. Still, the devaluation of women commences at birth with the preference for male offspring. This continues through childhood conditioning to the submissive and, later on, the subservient role required of them in the marital home.

Pedigree method of plant breeding is defined as a method of breeding in which individual plants are selected in the segregating generations from a cross on the basis of their desirability judged individually and on the basis of a pedigree record. This has been the most widely used method of plant breeding in all the self-pollinated crops and still continues to be so. This method has been first described by H. H. Lowe in 1927. This is the most widely used method to handle segregating generations following crosses between two parents to develop new cultivars combining desirable traits from both the parents. In this method, superior types are selected in successive segregating generations and a record is maintained of all parent-progeny relationships. The records help the breeder to advance only progeny lines with plants that exhibit genes for the desired traits. Selection begins in F2 generation where individual plants are selected which in judgment of breeder will produce the best progeny in F5/F6 when the selection is finally concluded. In F3 and F4 generations, many loci will have become homozygous and family characteristics begin to appear. By F5/F6 generation, most families are expected to be homozygous and uniform and hence selection within such families is no longer effective. 

Introduction

Quality of Work Life (QWL) is a popular concept among the organizations. Work is an essential part of everyday human life. Work influences the overall quality of life. Human resources are one of the main assets of any organization. Quality of work life (QWL) is one of the important subsystems of human resource management. There are economic, social, psychological and organizational aspects of work life. Many new subsystems are being added to human resource management with employees’ changing needs, culture, expectations, and work environment.

Seed quality is the possession of seed that is genetically pure and physically homogeneous, coupled with health and wellness.

A seed is the first genetic material that becomes the basis for future agriculture and seeds are the basic building blocks of agriculture. A great deal of farming has been modernized by technology, but without a regular and steady supply of high quality seed, yields would be drastically reduced and crop quality would decrease as well. The production of horticultural and agronomic crops depends largely on quality seed. For farmers, seed characteristics such as genetic purity, germination percentage, vigor, and appearance have a significant effect on yield. Every professional seed producer strives to achieve and maintain high seed quality.

Single seed descent (SSD) method of breeding is applicable to self-pollinated crops. The method of single seed descent (SSD) was born out of a need to speed up the breeding programme by rapidly inbreeding a population prior to initiating individual plant selection and evaluation while reducing a loss of genotypes during the segregating generations. SSD procedure is based on advancing generations through single seed from each plant in each generation. This separates the inbreeding phase from the selection phase and the population reaches F6 generation faster. This procedure carries forward maximum number of F2 plants to a stage near homozygosity, i.e. F6. It was first proposed by C. H. Goulden in 1941 when he obtained the F6 generation in two years by reducing the number of generations grown from a plant to one or two while conducting multiple plantings per year using greenhouse and off-season planting. H. W. Johnson and R. L. Bernard described the procedure of harvesting a single seed per plant for soybean in 1962. However, it was C.A. Brim who, in 1966, provided a formal description of the procedure of single seed descent, calling it a modified pedigree method.

The feeding is an important operation in aquaculture, it is the process of providing nutritious supplements or live feeds to the culture animal. The equipment used for this purpose is named as feeders. Equipment that is connected with fish feeding can be divided into three major groups, as follows

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Introduction

Quality seed plays seminal role in augmenting agricultural production as well as productivity. Only by using good quality seeds, productivity can be enhanced up to the tune of 15-20 per cent alone, but under optimum management, the increment may touch upon up to 45 per cent depending upon the crops since the efficiency and efficacy of all other inputs in the production technology gamut are contingent upon the quality of seeds being used. Since antiquity the importance of quality seed to enhance agricultural productivity is well evident as mentioned in old testimonials, literatures, scriptures, treatises, epics, and many other ancient documents.

Seed quality is the major decisive factor governing stand establishment of any crop and thus having immense importance and bears utmost priority in case of high value, low volume crops like vegetables in particular and for high volume low value crops in general for enhanced productivity and production as well (Mandal et al., 2015). A number of diverse materials/ treatments at varying doses have been used to increase the rate and uniformity of seedling emergence in wheat and rice, which are generally categorized for seed enhancement, which is a kind of value addition.

Seed enhancement may be defined as post-harvest treatments that improve germination and seedling growth or facilitate the delivery of seeds and other inputs/materials required at the time of sowing smoothly. Seed enhancement technology predominantly possess a central objective to further improve seed performance by treating with specific additives/ chemical/ organics/ botanicals, etc. under very specific regimes and with the aid of certain planting equipments to grow uniform crop obviously to harness higher productivity and production (Halmer, 2006). Various techniques have been employed to assure superior performance of additives in different crops and most have been found to have immense commercial application (TeKrony, 2006). This includes three general areas of enhancement: pre sowing hydration treatment (priming), coating, pelleting technologies and seed conditioning.

Abstract

This chapter presents the principle of fluidisation and its use in drying of food materials. Being a convective drying process, capacity and kinetics are limited by process conditions and material properties. The influences are discussed as well as presenting the main equations that describe drying in fluidised beds. The main focus lies on hot gas drying, additionally superheated steam drying as well as atmospheric fluidised bed freeze drying and microwave-assisted fluidised bed drying are presented and discussed.

Introduction

Seed as an input is the precursor for agricultural development as it alone can guarantee 20-30 per cent share of crop productivity (Koudinya and Kumar, 2014). Rigveda, the world’s most ancient scripture available, prescribes the importance of seeds as “Subeejam Sukshetre Jayate Sampadyate” which literally means, “A good seed in a good field can lead to the prosperity and posterity of the entire human race”. Seed production is indeed important to take care of a country’s food and nutritional security needs. At the same time, seed export across countries is vital for ensuring competitiveness in the domestic seed industry besides generating employment and valuable foreign exchange which in turn can be used for scaling up the seed sector’s efficiency itself (Poonia, 2013). As a matter of fact, seed trade is one of the reasons for huge advances made in the Indian seed industry through development and exchange of genetic transformation, marker-assisted breeding and nanotechnology (Nandi et al., 2013). As of 2014-15, global seed industry has reached USD 45 billion in which international seed export alone was worth USD 10 billion. Further, with the estimated growth rate of 9.2 per cent during 2015-2020, the world seed business is expected to be over USD 92 billion. Presently, USA, China, France, Netherlands and Brazil are the top markets comprising more than 66 per cent of the global share in seed trade. Corn, soybean and vegetables account for more than 75 per cent of the total global seed market volume. As of 2014-15, the value of the Asian vegetable seed market was USD 6.75 billion in which China had a major share (41 per cent) and the Indian share was around 7 per cent. Moreover, the world vegetable seed market alone is expected to grow at the rate of 7 -8 per cent per annum and reach USD 8.8 billion by the year 2020 (Parashar and Kumar, 2016).

Introduction

Seed is a critical and vital input that draws an explicit line between the success and failure of any agricultural production programme. In fact progressive history of agriculture has been a history of seed development and production. The mankind has been attempting to select better seed and employ better seed production techniques volitionally or in-volitionally ever since it divested nomadic life for the settled one. Initial attempts were confined to selection of useful crops followed by selection of better sorts and land races among the available native genetic resources. The introductions, hybridization followed by selection of better types and modern breeding tools inclusive biotechnological interventions have been extensively employed to breed better seed. Considering that research in crop improvement can turn little stone unless the quality seed with desired attributes is made available to the farmers. Government of India set up enforcement of provisions of Seed Act, 1966 for certification of seed as per prescribed minimum standards. Central Seed Certification Board was established in 1972 to exhort the central and state governments for producing genetically and physically pure and physiologically viable seed. The seed production programmes and rules were progressively honed to meet the ground situations. Initially the seed was considered as the exclusive bastion of public sector but the private sector got actively involved in seed production. WTO the seed still became a very open subject and the Seed Act was modified in 1988 and 2001 to permit import and export of quality seed, respectively. Despite of all these positive developments in seed sector, the availability of seed is still far from satisfactory. As on today private sector dabbles in low volume high cost seed due to economics and storage factors but the high volume less cost is still a virgin for private sector and is predominantly done by the public sector. Crop improvement is no more an art and science of improving hereditary of crop plants but has become a starker and competitive business under which the stronger would survive and the weaker get eliminated.

Business was abysmally shattered at the terminal end of the Second World War. This forced some nations to sign some tariff related global