eChapters

Principle

The nitrogen of protein and other compounds is transformed into ammonium sulphate by acid digestion with boiling sulphuric acid. the acid digest is cooled, dilute with water, and made strongly basic with sodium hydroxide. The released ammonia is distilled into a boric acid solution or standard sulphuric acid solution. When boric acid is used to collect ammonia then is the titrated with standard sulphuric acid or standard hydrochloric acid. When standard sulphuric acid is used to collect ammonia then it is titrated with standard sodium hydroxide solution.

Root harvesting equipment is useful in harvesting root crops such as potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips, onions, sweet potatoes, and other underground crops. These machines are designed to dig, lift, and separate the roots from the soil while minimizing damage to the crops. Root harvesting equipment can vary in size and design depending on the crop being harvested and the scale of the operation. Here’s an overview of the different types of root harvesting equipment and their features:
VARIANTS OF ROOT HARVESTING EQUIPMENT
Potato Harvesters
• Two-Row Potato Harvesters: These machines are designed to harvest two rows of potatoes at a time. They dig up the potatoes from the soil, separate the soil, and lift the potatoes onto a conveyor system for sorting and further processing.
• Single-Row Potato Harvesters: These are typically smaller machines used for smaller fields or specialized crops. They work similarly to two-row harvesters but are designed for single-row efficiency.
• Self-Propelled Potato Harvesters: These are large, fully mechanized machines capable of harvesting large fields. They often come with additional features like sorting tables and storage bins.
• Trailed Potato Harvesters: These harvesters are attached to a tractor and are commonly used for medium to large-scale potato operations. They consist of digging units, separation mechanisms, and conveyors to lift and transport potatoes.

History of human civilization initiated with the struggle against hunger, it flourishes with the fight against poverty and turns oblivious with absence of voices being raised against these two bio-social lethal. If hunger is a pain, poverty is an agony, then, keeping silent against this carcinoma of civilization is no doubt a crime. Is it that poor people are put to an insurmountable silence by the ruthless hegemonies of political economy, or, they are silent, that’s why they remain poor? Silence has been the lethal enzyme in transforming poverty into hunger, and, offers to a socio- chemical bond, poverty-hunger-silence; the bond that remains non-breakable as on date. Economists lament for poverty, nutritionists regret hunger, but the issues of silence and its cohesion to both hunger and poverty has seldom been scholastically delved into or dealt with. We can hope, a desperation of wishful thinking as it may be, shall drench the researchers who think and feel to explore a missing link between hunger and poverty, the silence or the social anemia of voices.

Abstract

The available data revealed that the area under temperate fruits in Uttaranchal was about 1.4 lakh ha, which was more than 60 per cent of total area under fruit crops, whereas the production per annum was to the tune of 44.50 per cent  of the total fruit production in the state. The productivity status of apple (1.38 t/ha) was very low as compared to national average productivity of 4.98 t/ha. Unfortunately, the prevailing constraints such as non-availability of elite planting material; lack of technical know how; dry land horticulture; high cost of production, lack of credit awareness and availability; small and fragmented land holding; old and senile orchard; lack of transport and communication facilities; poor mechanization; lack of efficient marketing system and post harvest infrastructure do not allow the farmers to take advantage of the emerging opportunities in temperate fruit production.

Synchronization of estrus is making a group of cows to come into estrus at the same time.  Effective estrus detection requires much time, labour, skill and expense and it is a major limiting factor in artificial insemination programme in cattle.  It was the principal stimulus that led to research in the development of progestational and prostaglandin compounds. 

Advantages

1.     Improve the efficiency of heat detection

2.     Management tool, better planning of breeding activities and wider use of artificial insemination 

3.     Solve problem of unobserved estrus

4.     Maintain short calving interval

5.     Overall improvement in herd productivity and reproductive efficiency

6.     Controlled lactation

7.     Management of replacement heifers

8.     Useful in embryo transfer programmes

9.     Reduce labour

10.     Possibly reduce involuntary culling for reproductive reasons

Introduction

Increasing production of cereal crops, oil seed crops, and horticultural crops is becoming more important than ever before owing to increasing population and changing food habits of the people. The modern tools of biotechnology are being exploited to the fullest throughout the world for developing transgenic crop plants with improved traits. Already about 20 countries in the world are growing transgenic crops, predominately with traits such herbicide tolerance and resistance to insect-pests. However, there is a constant fear of pollen flow from theses transgenics to the neighbouring non-transgenic fields or to their weedy or wild relatives. It has become a matter of great concern to all biotechnologists to develop alternative strategies to prevent the pollen flow.

The best alternative strategy available today to circumvent the nuclear- transformation associated bottlenecks in developing tenable crop transgenics is the chloroplast transformation technology. This technology allows introduction and insertion of foreign genes into the chloroplast genome, called plastome. Chloroplasts are the site for photosynthesis in plants mostly present in leaves. In general called plastids, they are also present in other parts of the plant. For example, chromoplasts in coloured leaves and fruits, amyloplasts in starch storing organs, leucoplats in roots, and etioplasts in dark-grown seedlings. The plastids arise from proplastids - the undifferentiated form of plastids present in most plant cells. Just like nucleus, these plastids (and also mitochondria) contain their own genetic material on the chloroplast genome.

Almond (Prunus dulcis, syn. Prunus amygdalus Batsch.) is an important temperate fruit crop. In India, it is mostly cultivated in Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. Almond is a small deciduous tree, growing to 3–10 m tall, with a trunk up to 30 cm diameter. The young shoots are green at first, becoming purplish where exposed to sunlight, then grey in their second year. The leaves are lanceolate, 4–13 cm long and 1.2–4 cm broad, with a serrated margin and a 2.5cm petiole. The flowers are white or pale pink, 3–5 cm diameter with five petals, produced singly or in pairs before the leaves in early spring. The fruit is a drupe 3.5–6 cm long, with a downy outer coat. The outer covering or exocarp, fleshy in other members of Prunus such as the plum and cherry, is reduced to a leathery grey-green coat called the hull, which contains inside a hard shell the edible kernel, commonly called a nut in culinary terms. Generally, one kernel is present, but occasionally two. However, in botanical terms, an almond is not a true nut. In botanical parlance, the reticulated hard stony shell is called an endocarp. It is mature in the autumn, 7–8 months after flowering. The fruit of the wild forms contains the glycoside amygdalin, “which becomes transformed into deadly prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide) after crushing, chewing, or any other injury to the seed”. However, domesticated almonds are not toxic.(FAO, 2013 and Verma, 2014).

Introduction Broccoli (Brassica oleracea L. var. italica) having chromosome number 2n=2x=18 is a native of Mediterranean region. The broccoli was developed in eastern Mediterranean region and Italy is the main diversification which was later introduced into England about 1720. It is a cool season crop which produces fleshy green flower heads arranged on branches sprouting from thick edible stalk in such way that it looks like a miniature bonsai tree. It has the same family as cabbage and cauliflower. Even though it resembles cauliflower by forming head like structure but it has longer flower stalks with loose large green terminal head (10 to 20 cm). In Italy broccoli is called as broccoli which means “the flowering crest of a cabbage.” Due to the presence of bountiful nutritious properties, it is also known as “Crown Jewel of Nutrition”. It is a great source of vitamins A, B and C and minerals like iron, fibre, calcium, zinc, magnesium etc. Apart from the minerals and vitamin it also a rich source of riboflavin, thiamine and niacin.

Abstract

Paradoxically, on one hand wild relatives of crop plants got utilized as donor parents in developing hybrids and on the other hand got lost due to lack of conservation of practices, thus genetic erosion. And temperate fruit genetic resources are no exception. Over dependence of growers/orchardists on modern high yielding cultivars and all round development led to neglect of valuable genetic resources of fruit crops. Yet, there are scores of examples where wild relatives have been exploited for genetic improvement of temperate fruits and nuts and still there exists a rich plethora of genetic diversity in the Himalayas which remains untapped and underutilized. Through the process of naturalization, several  elite genotypes, often referred to as geographical/ecological races and biotypes have emerged possessing unique characteristics valuable from horticultural point of view.

Buffaloes, though have great production potential, do suffer with many reproductive problems viz.  delayed age of puberty and  sexual maturity, weak / silent estrus, longer inter-calving period,  seasonality in breeding, poor libido  and poor semen quality. Little information is available about the buffaloes as compared to cattle because all the time we try to apply the knowledge available about the cattle to the buffalo.  Some comparative reproductive parameters in cow & she buffalo & cow bull and buffalo bull are depicted in Table 8. 1 and Table 8.2 respectively.

Downy Mildew (Green Ear)

Sclerospora graminicola

Economic Importance

• Downy mildew is reported from temperate and tropical regions of the world.
• In India, the disease is a major stumbling block in the full exploitation of yield potential of hybrids.
• Several epidemics have been observed which resulted in substantial grain yield losses (upto 60 percent) in F₁ hybrids under South Indian conditions.
• Usually the losses in grain yield are directly proportional to disease incidence in the field.

Terrestrial or epiphytic members of the family Bromeliaceae that are grown in gardens for their unusually coloured and patterned leaves or showy inflorescences and fruits are referred to as ornamental ‘Bromeliads’. Being low growing, they are ideally displayed in containers or as epiphytes. They are sun loving, suckering in habit and have xerophytic adaptations. The leaves are tough and fibrous often with spiny margins and sheathing leaf bases that hold water. A grayish-white waxy or powdery coating often covers the lamina. Certain bromeliads have a water collecting depression at the center. Inflorescences are sunken, erect or reclining, with condensed or long and much branched stalks carrying colourful bracts and usually, less showy flowers. In many, the terminal leaves become brightly coloured at flowering. These and the floral bracts remain showy even after the flowers are shed.

Ornamental bromeliads popularly grown in gardens include the following:

Aechmea blanchetiana

Copper leaf bromeliad

Plants have strap like leaves that develop streaks of coppery red colour on the upper surface in bright sunlight.

Aechmea burle-marxii

Burle-Marx bromeliad

The major challenges to any developing society are poverty and economic deprivation of its ruralpopulation.Eradication of poverty, the focus of all developmental efforts has remained a very complicated and serious concern among developing countries. Poverty is abysmal rooted covering several interlocked aspects such as lack of asset, under employment, uncertain and relatively unproductive employment, low remuneration, economic vulnerability, illiteracy, social disadvantage etc.

The rural areas were found to be more prone to poverty, even if it exists in urban areas also. The rural poor are perpetuating poverty and are the victims of the “vicious cycle of poverty”. Fishing communities in the coastal belts all over the world are also not an exception to this. Poverty in fishing communities is very common and is characterized by high population density, poor living conditions, lack of proper education and poor access to education and health care. Due to poor attention paid by the state, the infrastructure support like roads, electricity, good drinking water, markets etc also are be poor. Though efforts for reducing fishing pressure is taken by Government, scope for alternative employment opportunities are less. Thus those sector that are in engaged inthe world’s most dangerous occupations, are considered on par with SC/ST communities as far as India is concerned. The loss of a boat, gear or an active fisherman in the family can be tragic and lead to total financial deprivation of the family. Hence poverty and vulnerability in fishing communities is widely known but poorly addressed issue. As in rural farming sector, dependence of fishing communities on private moneylenders continues in many areas, especially for meeting emergent requirements. For various reasons, credit to these sections of the population has not been institutionalized.

The emergence of microfinance as an alternative financial delivery mechanism was a response to the failure of past efforts by government and international agencies effectively to provide financial services to the poor. But while considering micro finance programmes for fisheries sector, there should be special considerations that are unique to fishing communities and need special consideration. Instead of random payment of loans to target sectors and populations, efforts were taken for setting up and building local institutions that cater for the poor. This resulted in the materialization of microfinance institutions (MFIs) that serve the rural poor. MFIs initially started providing microcredit but have now extended their services to savings, insurance etc.

Cohn (1875) first observed and described a branching filamentous microorganism in the ‘concretions’ (coagulated mass) taken from a lacrimal canal, later identified as Actinomyces israelii. Bollinger first reported the yellow granules in jaw tissues of the cattle in 1877 and established the significance of the bacteria as the etiological agent. In 1878, Israel described the first human case. In 1879, Hartz observed the microscopic appearance of granules of Actinomyces and suggested the name Actinomyces bovis. Mosselman & Lihnaux (1890) and Wolf & Israel (1891) first isolated the bacteria in artificial laboratory media from lumpy jaw cases of cattle and human actinomycosis, respectively.

Introduction

Millet is a very important cereal grain that many people around the world eat. In fact, over a third of the world’s population consumes millet. It’s the sixth most produced cereal crop globally. Some common types of millet include Jowar (Sorghum), Sama (Little millet), Ragi (Finger millet), Korra (Foxtail millet), and Variga (Proso millet). Among these, Bajra and Sama have more fat, while Ragi has the least. Millet has been cultivated for thousands of years and is used in many parts of the world. In the past, even the Romans and Gauls enjoyed millet-based porridges. Today, China, India, Greece, Egypt, and various African countries are the major producers of millet. In rural areas, some types of millet, like Finger millet and Sorghum, are eaten by people, while others are primarily used as animal feed. These millets have packed with several beneficial nutrients and play a crucial role in traditional diets in many regions. Compared to commonly used rice and wheat, millet is three to five times more nutritious. While wheat and rice mainly provide food security, millet offers not only food security but also health benefits and livelihood opportunities. It can help manage health issues like diabetes and high cholesterol.

In India, Karnataka is the top producer of millets, accounting for over 58% of global production. Despite its nutritional and health benefits, many people in India are not aware of the advantages of consuming millet. (Upadhyaya et al., 2007). Millets are fantastic crops when it comes to pest management. Traditionally grown millets don’t require pesticides and the land used for millet cultivation remains largely pest-free. Some millets, like foxtail millet, not only resist pests themselves but also serve as natural protectors against pests in storage conditions for other crops like green gram. This means there’s no need for fumigants to keep them safe. It has a treasure trove of micronutrients, including vitamins and beta-carotene, which are now seen as essential as pharmaceutical pills. In the present day, millets are exceptionally superior and serve as a solution to the widespread issues of malnutrition and obesity affecting a significant portion of the Indian population (Singh KP et al., 2012). Millets are rich in essential fatty acids, including linoleic, oleic, and palmitic acids, which are present in their free form. They also contain compounds like monogalactosyl, diacylglycerols, digalactosyl diacylglycerols, phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylserine and phosphatidylcholine in bound forms. Although other fatty acids like arachidic acid, behenic acid and erucic acid are found in millets, they are in trace amounts. Millet oil can be a valuable source of linoleic acid and tocopherols. Additionally, millets are gluten-free and have an alkaline effect in the body. They contain essential B vitamins such as niacin, folacin, riboflavin, and thiamine, as well as phosphorus. These nutrients play a crucial role in energy synthesis within the body.

1. ‘Agrostoogical’ refers to cultivation of_____________. (Grasses)
2. Land on which the potential plant community is composed periodically of native grass, forbs and shrubs valuable for forage and in sufficient quantity to justifying grazing use is called as_____________. (Rangeland)
3. The basic object of range management is to_____________ and_____________ the rangeland for higher production of fodder, rich in nutritive value and palatability. (Improve & maintain)
4. ICAR had carried a grassland survey of India in 1954 by Wnyte, Venkatramanan and Dabadghao had found_____________ types of grass land in different environment. (8)
5. The main reason for the enormous increase in livestock population is_____________. (Social attitude of the people)
6. All the vegetation consumed by grazing animals including fruits and twigs of trees and shrubs is called_____________. (Pasturage & forage)
7. The practice by which the gap can be bridged between the requirement and availability of animal feeds and fodder is known as_____________. (Grass land techniques)
8. The scientists_____________ have recognised five type of grass covers in India. (Dabadghao & Shankar Narayan, 1979)
9. The maximum area of about 2.8 milloin square kilometre is covered under_____________ type of grassland in India. (Phragmites Saccharum type)

Abstract

India has now become the largest producer of fruits after China by producing 45.2 million tones of fruits from 3.78 million hectare area (NHB, 2004). India is first in the production of mango, banana, sapota and acid lime. India has also recorded highest productivity in grapes, sapota and acid lime in the world. India produces about 40 fruits commercially; however, the major share is from tropical and subtropical fruits like mango (28.17%), banana (29.43%), citrus (15.56 %), guava (3.97%) and grapes (2.76 %). Among temperate fruits apple has maximum area and production and 2. 98 % share in total production. Temperate fruits growing in India spread over some 18 states. These states are categorized into 3 major regions, namely, Northern Western Himalayan Region (NWHR), North Eastern Himalayan Region (NEHR) and other hilly areas.

Ker (Capparis decidua (Forsk.) Edgew, (synonym Capparis aphylla, Roth) is a multipurpose, perennial, woody shrub or small tree found growing naturally in hot arid regions and semi-arid subtropics in various parts of the world. In India, it is known by different names in different parts of the country. In Rajasthan, it is generally called Kair or Ker while in Haryana it is known as Teent or Dela. Some more synonym by which ker is known are Caper, Karyal, Hanbag, Cari, Karira etc while in English, it is known as Caper berry. This species is an important constituent of arid ecosystem and plays significant roles in sustaining the ecosystem. The peoples of Indian Thar desert have known the importance of this shrub for long back. On account of its acquired xerophytic adaptive characteristics, it is capable of growing in various kinds of habitats including wastelands. It is also suitable for stabilizing sand dunes and controlling soil erosion by wind and water. Due to its xerophytic adaptive nature, the plant grows successfully under harsh climatic conditions of arid regions. Berry-shaped unripe fruits are rich in carbohydrates, proteins and minerals. It was abundant about five decades back, but, with increase in populations of humans and livestock and more demand of land for agricultural purpose, it has been over-exploited and eliminated by tractor ploughing and excessive browsing pressure from livestock. This has resulted in significant reduction in plant population of ker, but people still try to retain some plants on farm boundaries as this also prevent soil erosion which is quite high due to wind.

Fisheries as a source of food, livelihood and income is probably as old as human civilization. Millions of men and women across the world, especially the developing world, are dependent on the sector. While fish capture in the open seas has generally been a male preserve conditioned by various social, cultural and economic factors; women also have significant contributions for sustaining household nutritional and income security. They have been engaged in fishing in inshore coastal waters, inland water bodies like rivers and ponds; and in post harvest activities like pre-processing, processing, drying, salting, and allied activities like marketing, net making and mending etc. With increasing volumes of fish coming from culture fisheries the participation of men and women in these activities are also increasing. Suffice to say that both men and women contribute to the overall growth and development of the fisheries sector. However, often women and their contributions tend to be marginalized in the fisheries development debate.

Women’s roles in fisheries

In the marine fisheries sector, fishing is largely a male preserve. Women rarely venture into the sae, conditioned by cultural and social taboos rather than by skill and endurance. However, the support from women in managing the households and in taking up subsistence or other livelihood activities related to fisheries activities that may actually go into the household income security need to be acknowledged. Studies show that women comprise about 46% of the labour force in small-scale capture fisheries-related activities (FAO, World Bank, IFAD, 2008). It is as high as 73% in Nigeria to a low of 4% in Mozambique. At least 50 % of the workforce in inland fisheries and 60 % of those marketing fish are women in Asia and West Africa.