eChapters

I. General Information

Use of computers into the design process has benefited landscaping industry in several ways. There are several advantages in using computers for design. The most important factor is that the computer can store and handle large amount of engineering data, which can be used in various stages of design, development and manufacturer, like conceptual design, analysis, component design, documentation, process planning and manufacturing. The product development approach using the computer aided design and computer aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) results in better and consistently good quality products invariably at a lower cost, with the attendant benefits of faster development of different variants of the product or model. The following table highlights the relative advantage of human designers and computers.

Introduction

The concept of Computer Aided Design (CAD) for landscape gardening is comparatively new. It can be defined as design and drafting of a landscape garden with the aid of computer. It can also be defined as use of information technology in garden designing. The core of the CAD system is software, which makes use of graphics for product representation. Computer aided designing is an important industrial art, extensively used in industry and landscape architecture designing and for many more purposes. For landscape designs, it represents a practical solution for the imperative needs of helping to visualise the future. Now-a-days, CAD is used to create 2D or 3D computer models. CAD assists the designer

Introduction

The major potential areas for inland aquaculture have already been explored in India. Additional production can only be achieved through successful manipulation of available resources that influence the productivity of various aquaculture systems. This can be achieved through maintenance of adequate levels of nutrients in the pond environment. Pond management in fish culture is mainly concerned with fertilization requirements and strategies with better management practices (BMP) of pond soil and water quality. BMP could be achieved through adoption of advanced technology, computer based diognostic/decision tools, software packages for quick, accurate, authetic data management.

Computer-based instructional teaching and learning platforms, commonly known as Learning Management Systems (LMS) or educational technology (EdTech) platforms, are designed to enhance the educational experience by integrating technology into the learning process. These platforms offer a range of tools and features that support both instructors and students in various educational activities. Here are some key platforms and their features:

Key Platforms

Moodle

Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is a widely used open-source Learning Management System (LMS) designed to provide educators, administrators, and learners with a robust, secure, and integrated system to create personalized learning environments. Here's an in depth look at Moodle, its features, and its use cases:

Key Features of Moodle

1. Course Management

• Customizable Course Creation: Instructors can design courses with f lexible layouts, multimedia content, and varied activities.

• Modular Plugins: Extensive library of plugins for activities, resources, and user management

14.1 Computer

Computer is an electronic device designed to accept and store data, process them and produce meaningful results under the direction of detailed step by instructions.

In 1822, Charles Babbage, a professor of Cambridge University designed a machine called an “Analytical Engine”, which could store data and perform arithmetic operations and printing out results. He is known as “Father of Computer”.

14.1.1 Basic anatomy of computer

The word Anatomy of a computer means inner structure of the computer. The study of anatomy of computer is necessary to acquire the knowledge and functioning of its inner components. Thus, essentially a computer consists of the following three main units

VIVEK M. PATIL & M.D. SURANAGI

A computer is an electronic device that has the ability to store, retrieve, and process data, and can be programmed with instructions that it remembers. Simply put, it is a very obedient servant which does whatever task it is commanded to do, in the manner in which it is trained/ programmed to carry out that task. Some of the terms commonly referred to while using computers are:

• Hardware : The physical parts that make up a computer eg. input devices, the central processing unit (CPU), memory and output devices.
• Software : A set of instructions that tell the computer what to do and how to perform a particular task is called a program, software program, or software. eg. Microsoft Word document management software enables us to type out a letter.
• Peripherals : Hardware devices connected to a computer i.e. any part of the computer outside the CPU and working memory. eg. keyboard, mouse, monitor, printer, scanner, disk and tape drives, microphone, speakers, joystick, plotter, and camera.
• Input : Whatever is typed, submitted or entered into a computer system. eg. typing a list of names.
• Data : The symbols that represent facts, objects and ideas on a computer. eg. representation of a list of names in binary language.
• Processing : Manipulation of data by the CPU of the computer or a microprocessor. eg. sorting of the list of names in alphabetic order.
• Output : The result produced by a computer after manipulating data. eg. printing out the list of names in alphabetic order.
• Memory : An area of the computer that temporarily holds data waiting to be processed or stored. eg. random access memory (RAM) and read only memory (ROM)

15.1 Computer Network

It is a group of computers and peripherals which are interconnected to share information and resources. A communication system that supports many users can be called a Network or we can say network is a communication system which interconnects many users who have something in common, either with respect to the type of data being sent or to the geographic areas that the users cover. There are three types of computer networks:

15.1.1 Local area network (LAN)

It is a small network (2 to 100 nodes) usually located within a single building or group of buildings belonging to an organization or an institute.

Computer vision provides an important foundation for automated plant analysis, monitoring and precision agriculture. This chapter explores computer vision approaches for plant phenotyping, disease detection, growth monitoring and yield prediction. Traditional image-processing methods are considered alongside machine learning and modern deep learning techniques, including convolutional neural networks and vision transformers. Image segmentation, object detection and classification are used to extract meaningful information from plant images and video data. The chapter also examines multispectral and hyperspectral imaging, IoT integration and real-time monitoring. Environmental variability, dataset quality, computational complexity and model generalization are discussed, together with transfer learning, data augmentation, edge computing and future directions

Introduction

Agriculture has played an important role in the global economy in recent years. The further growth of the population is leading to a gradual decrease in the area of the agricultural land and further growing stresses on the farm system. Agricultural food production methods are rising in demand for successful and healthy. Innovative sensoring and motive technologies and advanced information and communications systems and Artificial Intelligence must supplement conventional agricultural management methods to speed up farm productivity growth more accurately, thereby promoting the production of high-quality and high-performance agriculture. Computer vision monitoring systems have become valuable tools in farm operations over the past decades, and their use has increased significantly.

What is Computer Vision?

Computer vision can be characterized as a field of AI for extracting information from digital images. The type of data obtained from an image may be different from recognition, navigational space measurements or applications of increased reality.

The applications of computer vision can also be described. Computer vision builds algorithms that recognize and use the quality of pictures for other purposes.

Milk may be concentrated as a necessary initial step in drying operation or as concentrating step in the manufacture of sweetened condensed milk or evaporated milk or the preparation of infant formulae. In order to preserve the milk constituents in a concentrated form, condensed milk/concentrated milk is manufactured from whole skim milk by removing or evaporating part of the water under vacuum. But this form of milk still has limited shelf life. Attempts to prolong the shelf life of this product have been made through the addition of bacterial growth inhibitor like sugar (sweetened condensed milk) or by heat processing (evaporated milk) to destroy the microorganisms.

Concentrated milk industry is an important segment of dairy industry. It plays an important role in the economy of industry. It serves as a balanced economy. It utilizes surplus milk in the flush season. It utilizes abundant milk production in certain localized area. It makes use of surplus milk below excellent grade. By either concentrating or drying less space is needed to store and it becomes less bulky and therefore it can be transported to any part of the world. The keeping quality of milk is increased. The concentrated products give considerable saving in the cost of packaging, storage and transportation. Milk concentrates can be easily reconstituted with required amount of water corresponding to that removed by evaporation to yield a product having normal consistency of milk. It is estimated that nearly two per cent of the world’s milk production is converted into different types of condensed or concentrated milks.

Brief history and developments: The present day concept of preservation of milk by concentration and by application of heat had the beginning with the pioneering work of French man Nicholas Appert around 1793. Gail Bordon of USA was first to commercially exploit the method of concentration of milk under vacuum. He was awarded U.S. Patent in the year 1856 for processing milk in a semi-fluid state after evaporating under vacuum. Commercial production of sweetened condensed milk by Gail Bordon started in 1856.

Introduction

A solar collector, the special energy exchanger, converts solar irradiation energy either to the thermal energy of the working fluid in solar thermal applications, or to the electric energy directly in Photovoltaic (PV) applications. For solar thermal applications, solar irradiation is absorbed by a solar collector as heat which is then transferred to its working fluid (air, water or oil). The heat carried by the working fluid can be used to either provide domestic hot water/heating, or to charge a thermal energy storage tank from which the heat can be drawn for use later (at night or cloudy days). Solar collectors are usually classified into two categories according to concentration ratios: non-concentrating collectors and concentrating collectors. A non-concentrating collector has the same intercepting area as its absorbing area, whilst a sun-tracking concentrating solar collector usually has concave reflecting surfaces to intercept and focus the solar irradiation to a much smaller receiving area, resulting in an increased heat flux so that the thermodynamic cycle can achieve higher Carnot efficiency when working under higher temperatures.

1. INTRODUCTION

Juices and pulps are produced from a wide variety of fruits and vegetables around the world, while some medicinal plants and herbs are also used for preparation of extract of beneficial bioactive compounds. These juices and extracts contain very high proportions (upto 75-90%) of water. Due to their seasonal nature, these products can not be produced round the year in various parts of the world. Preservation, storage, transportation and marketing of single strength juices, pulps and extracts is not at all economical due to the presence of large quantities of water. Under these circumstances, the technology of concentration offers many advantages.

In chemistry, concentration, as a state, may be defined as “the abundance of a constituent divided by the total volume of a mixture” and can be mathematically explained in four types i.e. mass concentration, volume concentration, molar concentration and number concentration. Generally, the term concentration can be applied to any mixture (solid or liquid) but most frequently it refers to the presence of solutes in solvents. Mass concentration is defined as mass/volume (m/V) of mixture and represented in kg/m³, volume concentration as volume of a constituent divided by the volume of all constituents of the mixture (v/V) and represented in m³/m³, molar concentration as moles of a constituent divided by the volume of all constituents of the mixture (n/V) and represented in mol/m³, while, number concentration is defined as the number of entities of a constituent in a mixture divided by the volume of the mixture (N/V) represented in 1/m³.

In food technology or fruit juice industry in particular, concentration refers to a process of separation of water (or any other solvent) from the solids of the pulp, juice, extract by making use of any of the three basic methods i.e. evaporation, freezing and membrane technology. Pulps, juices and extracts are the basic material used for preparation of various types of processed products. But due to their bulk and presence of large quantities of water they are difficult to store and transport. Concentration of juices, not only provides microbial stability, but also reduces the costs of packaging, transportation and storage by reducing the bulk of the material. Concentrated juice, contains far less water than normal, or “not-from-concentrate” forms of juice.

Plant genetic resources represent both the basis for agricultural development and a reservoir of genetic adaptability that acts as a buffer against environmental changes. The erosion of these resources threatens world food security. From an agricultural utilitarian standpoint, plant genetic resources can be considered limited and perishable natural resources. PGR forms a distinct group and include all plant species, which contribute to people livelihoods by providing food, medicine, feed for domestic animals, fibres, clothing, shelter, energy and other uses and are subject to cultivation by man as well as the wild relatives of these species. Genetic diversity simply means all the variety of genes that exist in a particular variety or species. They provide the raw material (genes) which, when used and combined in the right way, produce new and better plant varieties, and are an irreplaceable source of such characteristics as resistance to disease, local adaptation, and productivity. Plant genetic resources are now, and will continue to be in the future, of inestimable value independently of whether scientists use them by means of conventional plant breeding or modern genetic engineering. These genes are dispersed throughout local cultivars and natural plant populations that have been selected over thousands of years by farmers and nature for their characteristics of adaptation, resistance and/or productivity. The road to a continuous increase in the production and quality of food lies through the protection and efficient utilization of plant genetic resources; this requires their conservation, evaluation, documentation and exchange.

Introduction

National Gene Banks are now entering into an era of increased activity and responsibility, particularly for managing their own indigenous germplasm activities extending from collection to actual use of the genetic variation in crop improvement programmes. However, these tasks must be achieved with limited resources in best possible time frame. The core collection offers a potential opportunity to meet these challenges. Recognising that the sheer size of a germplasm collection could deter its use, Frankel (1984) proposed that it could be pruned to a ‘core collection’, which would represent, “with minimum repetitiveness, the genetic diversity of a crop species and its relatives”. The core collection consist of a limited set of accessions derived from a germplasm collection, chosen to represent the genetic spectrum in the whole collection, and including as much as possible of its genetic diversity (Brown, 1995). The remaining accessions would not necessarily be discarded but would be managed as a ‘reserve collection’. The proposal, the rationale, purposes and general principles of core collections have been critically examined (Brown, 1989 a and b). As to the size of a core collection, sampling theory of selective neutral alleles in finite populations indicate that about 10 % drawn randomly from the whole collection was relatively efficient in retaining its allelic variation (about 70 % retained). The core collection concept has attracted considerable discussion and debate in the past and has met criticism in many areas. Most of these concerns appear to arise from misuse or misunderstanding of the core approach and a number of core collections have been established during the past decade.

SUMMARY

Organic farming is not new to Indian farming community. Several forms of organic farming are being successfully practiced in diverse climate, particularly in rainfed, tribal, mountains and hill areas of the country. Among all farming systems, organic farming is gaining wide attention among farmers, entrepreneurs, policy makers and agricultural scientists for varied reasons such as it minimizes the dependence on chemical inputs (fertilizers; pesticides; herbicides and other agro-chemicals) thus safeguards/improves quality of resources, and it is labour intensive and provides an opportunity to increase rural employment and achieve long term improvements in the quality of resource base. The popularity of organic farming is gradually increasing and now organic agriculture is practiced in almost all countries of the world, and its share of agricultural land and farms is growing.

India’s economic security continues to be predicated upon the agriculture sector, and the situation is not likely to change in the foreseeable future. Even now, agriculture supports 58% of the Indian population, as against about 75% at the time of independence. In the identical period, the contribution of agriculture and allied sector to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has fallen from 61 to 13%. As of today, India supports 16.8% of world’s population on 4.2% of world’s water resources and 2.3% of global land resources. Also per caput availability of resources is about 4 to 6 times less than that of world average. This will further decrease due to increasing demographic pressure and consequent diversion of the land for non-agricultural uses. Around 51% of India’s geographical area is already under cultivation as compared to 11% of the world average. The present cropping intensity is 136% and it has been registered an increase of only 25% since independence. Further, rainfed and dry-lands area constitute approximately 65% of the total net sown area. There is also an unprecedented degradation of land (107 million ha) and groundwater resource, and also fall in the rate of growth of total factor productivity. This deceleration needs to be arrested and agricultural productivity has to be doubled to meet growing demands of the population by 2050. Efficiency-mediated improvement in productivity is the most viable option to raise production of various commodities including horticulture.

Abstract

Tremendous changes in lifestyle, eating habits and shifting rural habitations are causing an irreversible change that is leading to manifold multiplication of health problems and these health issues have attracted the attention of every segment of the society in the recent past. Today foods are not intended to only satisfy hunger and to provide necessary nutrients for humans but also to prevent nutrition-related diseases and improve physical and mental well-being of the consumers. Due to increasing control over nutrition and health, consumers are becoming more proactive towards their health. In this regard, functional foods play an outstanding role and they are gaining public acceptance and there is great scope for value-added as well as health promoting food products in developing countries. Various terms have used for functional foods throughout the world such as designer foods, medicinal foods, nutraceuticals, therapeutic foods, superfoods, foodiceuticals, and medifoods. People are interested in foods which boost immune system, reduce the risk of diseases and improve health. The increasing demand of such foods can be explained by the increasing cost of healthcare, the steady increase in life expectancy, and the desire of older people for improved quality of their later years. Typically, a food marketed as functional contains added, technologically developed ingredients with a specific health benefit. These range of products cannot be truly classified as ‘food’ and a new hybrid term between nutrients and pharmaceuticals, ‘nutraceuticals’, has been coined to designate them. The development of functional foods involves the application of various food processing techniques such as microencapsulation of functional ingredients for controlled release, nanotechnology for the development of nanostructured (or nanotextured) food ingredients and delivery systems for nutrients and supplements etc. Inclusion of probiotic bacteria and probiotic supplements in various food systems has also become very popular and this is becoming a very vital sector in functional food market. Systematic RandD efforts are, therefore, required to develop health promoting foods for all segments of the society at affordable cost. Prior to promoting the developed health foods, it is of utmost importance to conduct clinical trials to ascertain safety and efficacy, and also establish appropriate regulatory framework for their distribution to masses. All these issues have been discussed in this paper and recommendations were drawn to formulate future research.

Concept of uncertainty

Uncertainty refers to a scenario in which a person is unsure of what will happen, i.e. when all possible outcomes of events are unknown, and neither the likelihood nor the outcomes are known. Uncertainty cannot be quantified; however, risk may be quantified using probability principles.

Farming is a financially hazardous profession. Farmers face an ever-changing panorama of possible pricing, yield, and other outcomes that affect their financial returns and overall well-being on a daily basis. Because the effects of decisions or events are frequently unknown until long after they occur, the outcomes may be better or worse than planned. When aggregate crop output or export demand fluctuates dramatically, for example, farm prices can swing dramatically, and farmers may see returns that are significantly below their expectations (Bairwa et al., 2013).

Food waste and loss is an enormous issue worldwide. The FAO states that ‘Hunger is still one of the most urgent development challenges, yet the world is producing more than enough food’, but a vast amount of what is produced gets lost on its way from the field to the consumer. According to the FAO, about 30% of cereals, 20% of dairy products, 35% of fish and seafood, 45% of fruits and vegetables, 20% of meat, 20% of oilseed and pulses and 45% of roots and tubers are lost or wasted. Postharvest food loss is defined as measurable qualitative and quantitative food loss along the supply chain, starting at the time of harvest till its consumption or other end uses. Food losses can either be the result of a direct quantitative loss, for example, during the process of harvest or transport or arise indirectly due to losses in crop quality such as undesired sprouting or water loss. Postharvest food loss consists of many factors, which have not changed much in the last 40 years and so postharvest food loss in general has not changed much. Figure 1 illustrates the main reasons for food loss along the supply chain and is based on ‘The food pipeline’ published by Bourne in 1977. Food loss is highest during storage due to pathogens (insects, bacteria and moulds), environmental conditions (e.g. rain, humidity, heat and frost), sprouting and quality loss (rancidity, water loss and saccharification) or animals (rodents and birds). Recently published data for Switzerland have shown that about 53%-55% of the initial fresh potato production and 41%-46% of the initial processing potato production are lost mostly due to pathogen infection, saccharification, water loss of tubers and early sprouting during storage (Buchholz et al, 2018).

The deviation from normal health is defined as disease. Health refers to the very absence of the disease. Therefore, health is a state where all the body
systems function normally and the activities continue within the physiological limits. So, the disease can be defined as the inability to perform physiological
functions at normal levels even when nutrition and other environmental requirements are provided at adequate level.