eChapters

ABSTRACT

Dairy farming plays a significant role in rural economy. It provides more avenues for increasing rural incomes and sustaining livelihood. Milk and other dairy products are a major source of protein and calcium for vast vegetarian population of India and demand is likely to double within a decade. Many of the educated youth in rural areas are going back to dairy farming as a natural choice with passion, getting involved deeply, continuously learning and innovating in the process. However these young and intuitive farmers face many challenges especially with regard to technical input and availability of green fodder round the year. In order to address these problems, this study was conducted in Muktsar district of Punjab. The young farmers selected belong to age group ranging from 24-35 years. Seventy percent of the respondents were graduates, among them 25 percent being technocrats. About 65 percent had medium family size (5 members). Eighty five percent of respondents had small land holding ranging from 5-8 acres. For majority of the respondents’ dairy was the primary occupation. Sixty percent of the respondents had obtained 45 day artificial insemination (AI) training from Dairy Development Board, Punjab and themselves did AI on their farm. Many (75 percent) had herd size of 35-40 animals. Majority of the farmers had hired labour for milking and daily care of animals with family members involved in management of the farm. Most of them (65 percent) believed in preparing their own silage and breed improvement. The study revealed that many educated youth in dairy farming were of progressive and scientific temper with entrepreneurship potential but were facing many impediments like low milk yield (4.5 – 6.5 kg/ animal/day), poor breed up gradation, green fodder shortage, a large number of services per conception (3 in majority cases) with artificial insemination (AI), low competence of veterinary service providers in remote rural areas in addition to high veterinary costs, difficulty in marketing milk from crossbred dairy cows due to low preference. It was felt that if sincere and sustained efforts were made by all the stakeholders involved, dairy farming had the potential for all round socio-economic development of rural areas.

ABSTRACT

The present study was carried out to assess the knowledge level of dairy Entrepreneurs of Patna District and to find the co-relation between the socioeconomic variables and the training needs. This study was conducted by personally interviewing 100 dairy farmers, sent for training at B.V.C. Patna by different Agencies. Majority of the respondents (58.20%) had medium level of knowledge flowed by 26% respondents with high level of knowledge, while some of the respondents (15.80%) had low level of knowledge about dairy entrepreneurship. The study of co-relation between socio-economic variables and training need of the respondents showed that variables like education (0.469), social participation (0.500) and the knowledge (0.734) were significantly and positively co-related with the training need. Whereas variables like age (0.063) family size (0.193) and land holding (0.072) were found to be positively but non-significantly co-related with the training needs while, the caste (-0.093) was found to be negatively and non-significantly co-related with the training needs at 0.05% level of probability. Therefore it is imperative on the part of change agency to utilize the variables gainfully so as to give needed push to knowledge level in the area of Dairy entrepreneurship development.

ABSTRACT

Indian agriculture is an economic symbiosis of crop and cattle population. Millions of family dairy farming dominates India’s dairy industry, contributing 62 percent of total milk produced in the country. So, encouraging family dairy farming in rural areas is necessary to increase the milk production at national level and increase the socioeconomic status of landless and marginal farmer. In rural areas there is a major problem of milk marketing. In urban scarcity of quality milk, other side in villages especially faraway from city there is surplus milk and farmers are not interested to rear more dairy animals. Marketing of surplus milk is main problem because milk is a highly perishable item and farmers not having time and also due to less quantity of surplus milk (3-5 liter) they are not interested to go market. For this we can work in group and collect milk at one place from all members and one person go to market for selling of milk. Extra milk can be used to manufacture other milk products like ghee, peda, paneeretc by other member. Some members also engaged in other work like treatment of animals, collect information of different schemes from related offices. While engaging with rural communities, we recognised that village women are the primary caretakers of cattle and play a significant role in dairy farming. As a result, the Village Woman Dairy DevelopmentProgramme - an initiative focusing on empowering village women engaged in dairy farming. Benefits in dairy farming depend on cost of feeding, medicines, labour and income from sale of milk. Milk price is fixed and not in farmers control so we increase the income through reducing the cost of milk production. Approx 70% cost of milk production on feeding of animals. To reduce cost of feeding and medicine we fed balanced ration to dairy animals. Also reducing cost of production by feeding locally available unconventional feeds through total mixed ration feeding and urea mineral molasses block supplementation.

INTRODUCTION

Livestock is an integral part of agriculture in our country. In the decade, India’s population has grown drastically by 13% to 1.2 billion people. Meeting the nutritional needs of this swiftly growing is a gargantuan challenge. Researchers and young farmers have an important role to play in the India Government strategy to relieve pressure on food resources. The dairy industry is a large and important sector in India. We are the highest milk producers in world and milk is an integral source of nutrition and household income. But per animal production is very low as compared to developed countries. The challenge is to improve production and reproduction of dairy animals. Indian farmers feed their animals with imbalanced ration. Supplementation of mineral and vitamins in feed not only improves health status but also in turn increase the income of dairy farmers. The economic contribution of dairy sector seems to be quite substantial in the agricultural economy as well as in the national economy. Keeping in view the growing importance of dairy sector in the changing national and global economic scenario, the dairy farming vocational training programs are organized in the Extension Center of LUVAS at Jind. To undertake this work, 856 young dairy farmers of the area who have successfully completed dairy farming vocational training programmes during the year 2010 to 2013 were selected for the collection of data.

³Ex-Head & Principal Scientist, Dairy Extension Divison, Karnal, Haryana

INTRODUCTION

Backyard poultry production is an age old practice in rural India. Rural poultry farming in India contributes to about 40% of the national egg production. In ancient time poultry birds were reared for different purposes such as for its fighting ability. In old civilization, the cocks are known for their morning alarm and the selection is also done for these traits. Their fighting ability is more responsible for their spread than there nutritive value of the chickens. Backyard poultry farming is now gaining considerable momentum in the country and enables rural community to participate, in the economic, political and social sustainable development of the rural communities.

Backyard poultry farming is being recognized as important component of socio- economic improvement among the weaker section of society; specially rural youth, landless labour, small and marginal farmers. Backyard poultry generates self-employment, provides supplementary income with protein rich food at relatively low cost. Backyard poultry farming is the one among different enterprises in the present situation which gives some assured income to rural youths of the country. Before 1950, poultry keeping in India was largely a backyard venture. During last 3-4 decades Indian poultry industry has shown excellent growth. Poultry farming is a profitable venture as a means of livelihood and income prosperity for rural youth and farmers. The small and marginal farmers may choose backyard poultry farming alternative method for generating good income with their limited land and water use. Keeping in view of demand of poultry eggs and meat in the country and its potential for income and employment generation among rural youth, there is a need to increase the poultry production in the country.

ABSTRACT

Bangladesh is a land of rivers, wet lands and tributaries across her deltaic plains in which aquaculture is a potential arena to meet dietary needs of protein. The main objective of this study was to bring out the dominating factors on adoption of modern aquaculture technologies by the fish farmers. The study was conducted in Kahaloo and Sherpurupazilas of Bogra district. Respondent fish farmers were selected using proportionate random sampling technique. Quantitative data were collected using predesigned interview schedule during August to September 2011. Socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents viz. ‘use of information sources’ ‘innovativeness’, ‘social participation’, ‘commercialization’ and hindrances of adoption i.e. ‘lack of technical knowledge’, ‘unavailability of credits in time’, ‘lack of quality fish fry’, ‘comparatively low market price’, ‘fish fry price is high’, ‘unavailability of quality fish feed’, ‘adulteration of fertilizers’ were the major dominating factors on adoption of modern aquaculture technologies. ‘formulated feed is costly’, ‘high production cost’

ABSTRACT

Hydroponics is a plant growth system that provides a more precise control of growth media composition. It offers people the ability to grow food in places where traditional agriculture simply isn’t possible. As Fiji has a warm tropical climate, the development of the tropical fruit and vegetable industry through hydroponics farming to meet local consumption and export market is a lucrative opportunity. The potential for hydroponics farming is enormous and is in demand to sustain production at reliable and consistent level in Fiji. Potential areas for the setting up of hydroponic farms in Fiji include Savusavu, Nadi, Navua, Sigatoka Valley and Labasa. These areas have established theirlogistical status with the market. A wide range of commodities are grown through hydroponics technology which complements the need to harness the “too hot” and “too wet” weather of tropical Fiji. The pristine environment and availability of resources such as water and other hydroponic farming input are added bonus to establishment of such venture. Hydro nut Hydroponic farming system are constructed as simplest form made of bamboo and coconuts using coconut husk as a growing media and worm casting and humus tea are used as fertilizer. It offers some significant benefits over traditional farming, and as word about these benefits spreads, more people will turn to hydroponics for their agricultural needs. As hydroponics allows produce to be grown locally and requires fewer areas to import their crops, there is a reduction in both price and greenhouse gas emissions due to reduced transportation requirements. This saves time and produces healthier, disease and pest free, lusher plants in about half the time as traditional agriculture farming system.

Summary

The main greenhouse gases (GHGs) that have caused the global climate change or global warming are carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O). CO₂ is the principal anthropogenic GHG that affects the earth’s radiative balance. It is the reference gas against which other GHGs are measured and therefore has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 1. CH₄ and N₂O have a GWP of 21 and 310, respectively. CO₂ is responsible for most of the enhanced greenhouse effect of more than 50%, CH₄ for about 10-15% and N₂O for about 8%. The global atmospheric concentrations of CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O have increased since 1750. While CO₂ increased from a pre-industrial value of 280 ppm to 379 ppm in 2005, CH₄ increased from 715 ppb to 1774 ppb and N₂O increased from 270 ppb to 319 ppb during the same period. Rich countries and large developing countries account for most of global CO₂ emissions (China 23.5%, USA 18.27%, India 5.83%, Russia 5.72%, Japan 4.04% and European Union 13.98%). A new climate agreement called ‘Warsaw International mechanisms (November 2013) on loss and damage’ agreed to help the poor countries to cope with loss and damage from heatwaves, droughts, floods, typhoons, desertification and rising sea levels. The Warsaw agreement also includes a set of decisions to help developing countries to reduce GHG emissions from deforestation and degradation of forests which is backed by pledges of US$280 million financing by the United States, Norway and the United Kingdom. Projections for global average temperature rise is in the range of 1.1-6.4°C; a doubling of CO₂ (from pre-industrial 280 ppm) and average sea level rise is in the range of 0.18-0.59 m (Meehel et al. 2007) and 0.5–2.4 m (Brown et al. 2013). Hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent. Projected data show that there is an increasing global trend in the rise of average temperature in all countries, regions or sub-zones; a decreasing trend in average precipitation in most sub-tropical areas and an increasing trend of precipitation in most of the tropical and high latitudes.

Summary

Climate change can affect the quantitative and qualitative status of water resources by altering hydrological cycles, systems and through changes of water quality via chemical and biological contamination. Changes in these variables lead to impacts on all the socio-economic and environmental goods and services that depend on these variables directly or indirectly including water supply, damage to ecosystems, water dependent food production. The most dominant climate drivers for water quantity or water availability are precipitation, run-off and river flows, floods, droughts, snows, glaciers, sea level rise etc. The observed climate change related impacts on world’s water resources/water quantity include increased precipitation at high latitudes and temperate areas and decreasing trends at low latitudes. The annual run-off in some regions may experience increased run-off, such as in high latitudes and large parts of the USA, whereas there has been a decrease in run-off such as parts of West Africa, southern Europe and southernmost of South America. Floods have been the most reported natural disaster events in Africa, Asia and Europe than all other natural disasters and in case of Bangladesh, six extreme floods have occurred in the last two decades. More intense droughts have been reported from Australia, semi-arid and semi-humid regions, western USA and southern Canada, the Sahel. Precipitation is projected to increase at mid- and high latitudes, in the tropics, whereas precipitation is projected to decrease over many sub-tropical areas (North Africa, northern Sahara), tropical Central American (Caribbean) and the Mediterranean. In areas where evaporation rates are expected to increase it would lead to reduced river and stream run-off. In contrast, areas receiving higher precipitation would likely have higher lake and river levels and may experience floods. The annual stream flow in the Murray-Darling basin (Australia) is projected to fall by 10-25% by 2050 and 16-48% by 2100 which would have severe consequences on irrigated agriculture in the region. Rivers depending on the Himalayan glaciers such as the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Syr Darya and Amu Darya could face water shortages or river run-off due to retreat of glaciers, and this would cause dramatic impact on drinking water supplies, biodiversity, hydropower, industry, agriculture and ecosystems on which about 2.4 billion people in Asia depends. Globally, ground water is the source of one third of all freshwater withdrawals, supplying an estimated 36%, 42% and 27% of the water used for domestic, agricultural and industrial purposes, respectively. The demand for groundwater is likely to increase due to global increase of water use for irrigation and a decline in surface water quality and reduced summer flows in snow-dominated basins. It is projected that climate change (drought, floods) will affect groundwater recharge rates (e.g. floods would increase recharge, drought would decrease recharge).

Summary

Climate change (floods, droughts, rise of temperature and sea level) can directly impact the incidence of water related diseases through effects on water temperature and precipitation frequency and intensity. This chapter focuses on some common water quality related diseases that may enhance due to climate change such as arsenicosis, cholera, cyanobacterial toxins, dengue, diarrhoea and malaria. Arsenicosis is the disease caused by arsenic (As) contamination. As poisoning via groundwater has become a worldwide problem with 21 countries experiencing As groundwater contamination including Bangladesh, India, and China. In Bangladesh, out of 64 districts, As levels in 60 districts have exceeded WHO recommended guidelines of 10 µg/L and in 51 districts it exceeded Bangladesh recommended guidelines of above 50 µg/L. Chronic exposure to As has been linked to carcinogenic effects in both humans and animals. These include cancer of the various skins and internal organs (lung, bladder, liver and kidney) and reproductive and developmental effects; cardiovascular disease; reduced intellectual function in children and mortality. Alternate floods and droughts (due to climate change) have been found associated with the release of As and contamination of groundwater in Bangladesh, therefore may increase the risks of the disease due to rise of extreme events such as floods and droughts. Cholera is a diarrhoeal disease caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. In 2012, WHO reported 245, 3931 cases of cholera in 48 countries, with more than 3,034 deaths with a case-fatality rate (CFR) of 1.2%. The highest cases were from Africa, followed by Latin America and Asia. The epidemic of cholera is reported to be linked strongly with climate change. Changes in temperature, salinity, rainfall and abundance of phytoplankton have been shown to cause an impact on distribution and survival of V. cholerae. In Bangladesh, cholera (cholera-toxin producing strain of V. cholerae) outbreaks are related to plankton blooms and rise of sea temperature.

Summary

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

Summary

Water security can be defined as reliable availability of water in sufficient quantity and quality to sustain human health, livelihoods, food (agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture) and the environment (biodiversity and ecosystems). Discharge of chemical and biological pollutants (from agriculture, industry and domestic uses) into rivers and development of engineering infrastructure such as dams and weirs over rivers have modified river ecosystems threatening the global water security, water quality and water dependent biodiversity. Climate change (increase in the intensity and frequency of floods, droughts, bushfire and sea-level rise, ocean acidification, etc.) is an additional stress on water security. There is a need to reduce climate change impacts on water security which can be done via adaptations to climate change. Adaptation is adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities. In other words, the adaptation can be considered as, tackling the effects of climate change. Adaptation to climate change in terms of sustainable use of water may include increasing water availability by developing hydro-basins and transferring water from areas in which it is abundant to areas in which there is scarcity, the reduction of water losses, increasing storage capacity by building reservoirs and dams, rainwater harvesting, improvement of water use efficiency, desalination of seawater, water savings (leakage management, metering, retrofitting existing homes with water efficient products in toilets, showers, baths, using energy efficient dishwashers and washing machines), mandatory rainwater tanks in new and old buildings (for toilet flushing, washing clothes, gardens, car washing), use of recycled or reclaimed water for landscape irrigation or to recharge groundwater aquifers, and to meet commercial and industrial water needs.

Introduction

Individual bits or “bytes” of “raw” biological data (e.g. the number of individual plants of a given species at a given location) do not by themselves inform the human mind. However, drawing various data together within an appropriate context yields information that may be useful (e.g. the distribution and abundance of the plant species at various points in space and time). In turn, this information helps foster the quality of knowing (e.g. whether the plant species is increasing or decreasing in distribution and abundance over space and time). Knowledge and experience blend to become wisdom—the power of applying these attributes critically or practically to make decisions. This quotation is from the Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Centre, a non-profit organization established in 1999.Thus, we are led to think about Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom as we explore the capabilities and limitations of IT systems.

Now days, in every walk of our life, we deal with a lot of information. It can be for personal use or family matters or for official or business matters. We store, process and retrieve variety of information. Information is basically the collection of various facts, records, statistics, formula or methods, which we use for our official work, for our research or for other use. When all these (information, we keep/ accumulate, for possible future use) are put in an organized manner, we find it convenient to use and easy to remember/ apply. Today, as it is rightly said, information is power; information is our knowledge-strength. It is thus important to organize and manage this knowledge that mostly depends on (and derived from) an information pool.

“Knowledge Management is the process by which an organization identifies, creates, manages and delivers information to enhance workforce performance. The purpose of knowledge management is to provide information collected from employees, best practices, clients, competitors and other sources in a format that employees can use to the productivity and quality of their work”

Before attempting to address the question of knowledge management, it’s probably appropriate to develop some perspective regarding this stuff called knowledge. Consider this observation made by Neil Fleming [1996] as a basis for thought relating to the following points.

Abstract

Cloud computing is becoming a technology mature enough for its use in genome research experiments. The use of large datasets, its highly demanding algorithms and the need for sudden computational resources, make large-scale sequencing experiments an attractive test-case for cloud computing. So far I have seen cloud computing demonstrated using R. However, it remains to be seen a rigorous comparison of its performance using a BLAST search and its ability to cope with ever-increasing databases and open source frameworks such as bioperl or bioconductor.

Introduction

The role of knowledge management as the key source for competitive advantage in our organizations has become a hotly debated topic. Indeed, it is a core competency for creating competitive advantage. In this environment that knowledge management is vital, therefore, at first we should determine knowledge management situation, and then to achieve a desired point, formulate a knowledge management strategy.

Abstract

Currently, computers are changing from single, isolated devices into entry points to a worldwide network of information exchange and business transactions called the World Wide Web (WWW).Current web contains billions of documents and has many administrative problems and limitations; in addition to that the web content is still accessible only to humans. For this reason, support in data, information, and knowledge exchange has become a key issue in current computer technology. The success of the WWW has made it increasingly difficult to find, access, present, and maintain the information required by a wide variety of users. In response to this problem, many new research initiatives and commercial enterprises have been set up to enrich available information with machine processable semantics.

Abstract
    
The amount of data being collected across a wide variety of fields today far exceeds our ability to reduce and analyze without the use of automated analysis techniques. In addition, the whole data may not be of user interest and imperfect. Therefore, it is very challenging to organize this data in formal system, which provides outputs in more relevant, useful, and structured manner. There are many techniques available to retrieve knowledge from this voluminous data. This paper discusses different rough computing based information retrieval techniques to obtain meaningful knowledge from large amount of datasets. We also discuss a real life example to show the viability of proposed research.

1. Machine Learning

Learning denotes changes in a system that enable a system to do the same task more efficiently the next time (Simon, 1983)or Learning is constructing or modifying representations of what is being experienced (Ryszard Michalski et al., 1986). Machine learning is a scientific discipline concerned with the design and development of algorithms that allow computers to evolve behaviors based on empirical data, such as sensor data or databases. A learner can take advantage of examples (data) to capture characteristics of interest of their unknown underlying probability distribution. Data can be seen as examples that illustrate relations between observed variables. Discover new things or structure that is unknown to humanseg. data mining.A major focus of machine learning research is to automatically learn to recognize complex patterns and make intelligent decisions based on data.

Introduction

The capabilities and effort to collect the geographic data has increased dramatically in the last decade to cope up with the increasing demand for the support of decision making and planning process in the state, national and global level.  From the Government sector, there is a need for spatial data to make quick responses to natural disasters, industrial accidents and environmental crises as actions will be decided based on geography. There is constant pressure to make wise decisions in a more time and cost effective and efficient manner. Accurate and current geospatial data are critical to these decisions.

Abstract

The study of computational toxicity prediction is very crucial and necessary, as it is quite time consuming and expensive to measure the toxicity via experimental techniques (Quan Liao et al., 2006). The use of computational approaches particularly to reduce the time and cost for the evaluation of the kinetic and toxic behaviour of any drug has been increased tremendously in recent time period (Richard Judson et al., 2004). Machine learning is a powerful tool to discover new complex combinatorial relationships in various in vitro and in vivo data information (Richard Judson et al., 2004) and has been successfully used in many diverse fields with numerous applications such as pharmacodynamics properties prediction (Czerminski et al., 2001; Livingstone et al., 2003), protein function prediction (Cai et al., 2003), medical decision making (Veropoulos, 2001), spam categorization (Drucker et al., 1999), detection of oil spills (Kubat et al., 1998), and speech recognition (Nuttakorn et al., 2001).

1. Introduction

With the fairly recent advent of inexpensive, rapid sequencing technologies that continue to improve sequencing efficiency and accuracy, many species of animals, plants, and microbes have annotated genomic information publicly available. It is important to use this genomic information for the identification and isolation of novel and superior alleles of important genes from gene pools of the organisms

Abstract

Fusion is a well known entity in various fields (e.g. medical imaging, weapon detection, flood monitoring etc.) that surmises information originating from several modalities. This chapter is an attempt to assort the various image fusion techniques available for human face recognition and to put a review of the advancements being made by the different researchers. The various types of fusion those have been used or may be used for face recognition have also been discussed here.

Abstract

Last few decades have witnessed an immense technological advancement in the education sector in India. With an advancement of technology, new gadgets are flooding the Indian market continuously bringing an immense opportunity for the education sector to improve upon the course delivery system. Higher education sector in India is adopting such new technologies in course delivery at a slow pace; however, there remains still a far way to traverse for the Indian education sector in order to achieve a perceptible and effective technology-infusion in the academic delivery arena. This paper is devoted to present an expository review on the usefulness of new gadgets, like smart phones, e-book reader as well as tablet PC, in both class-room education-delivery segments as well as in distance education sector in India.

Databases

A database is a collection of information that is organized so that it can easily be accessed, managed, and updated. Databases can be classified according to types of content: bibliographic, full-text, numeric and images and by their application area, for example: accounting, music compositions, movies, banking, manufacturing, or insurance. The term database may be narrowed to specify particular aspects of organized collection of data and may refer to the logical database, to the physical database as data content in computer data storage or to many other database sub-definitions.

Introduction

Data Mining is a complex subject that describes a type of database application used to search large amounts of data for patterns using specific tools. Advanced statistical methods and tools such as classification, association rule mining and cluster analysis search large volumes of data for previously unknown relationships within the data. Data Mining can be used to decipher trends in a wide variety of fields such as computer science, the marketing and advertising of goods, services or products, artificial intelligence research, biological sciences and high-level government intelligence. Data mining is a logical process that is used to search through large amounts of information in order to find important data.

Key words : CAVD, Drug Design, Bioinformatics, CADD, Co-factor, Vaccinology, infectious diseases, Jenner, immunity, Molecular modeling, Immunoinformatics, Antigen, Antibody, Live Vaccine, Alive Vaccine, Protein-peptide, Enzyme, Tools for Vaccine design,
 
Vaccine – Prevention is Better than Cure

A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism, and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins or one of its surface proteins. The agent stimulates the body’s immune system to recognize the agent

1. Introduction

Protein–protein interactions serve as the hub of the functioning of a living cell, coordinate biological processes as well as form core for interactomics system of living organisms. Various biological processes as signal transduction, cell-cell communication, ingestion or expulsion of any macromolecule, host parasite interaction, diseases as cancer and many other metabolic networks employ protein–protein interactions. During such a process two or more proteins interact transiently with each other or form complex for a long period of time. Thus attempts have been made for years to study comprehensive mechanism of such protein–protein interactions by various branches of sciences such as biochemistry, quantum chemistry, molecular dynamics, chemical biology and signal transduction. The availability of three-dimensional (3D) structure of proteins is a prerequisite for understanding functions of protein complexes at a molecular level as well as amino acid interactions within a complex.

Abstract

Protein-protein interactions play a major role in most cellular processes. Many essential cellular processes such as signal transduction, transport, cellular motion and most regulatory mechanisms are mediated by protein-protein interactions. The study of protein-protein interactions is of great importance in determining the biological function and impact of proteins. The experimental techniques remain expensive, time-consuming and labor-intense. Computational methods play an important role at all the stages of determining protein-protein interactions. In this chapter, we describe the different types of protein-protein interactions, computational methods, currently available databases and tools, protein-protein docking and as well as protein-protein interactions as drug targets.

Abstract

The field of bioinformatics emerged as a tool to facilitate biological discoveries more than 10 years ago. Structure prediction is fundamentally different from the inverse problem of protein design. Protein structure prediction is one of the most important goals pursued by bioinformatics and theoretical chemistry; it is highly important in medicine and biotechnology. Structure prediction is fundamentally different from the inverse problem of protein design. While the genome of many organism have been sequenced over the last few year, transforming such raw sequence data into knowledge remains a hard task. A great number of prediction program for genes have been developed hat try to address this problem, which consists of locating the genes along a genome.

The term bioinformatics was coined by Paulien Hogeweg in 1979 for the study of informatics processes in biotic systems. It was primarily used in genetic and genomic studies, particularly in those areas of genomics involving large-scale DNA sequencing. Bioinformatics involves application of information technology to store, organise and analyse the vast amount of biological data available in the form of sequences and structures of proteins (the building blocks of organisms) and nucleic acids (the information carrier). There are umpteen ways to define bioinformatics, mainly owing to its rapid evolutions.

Establishment of databases and data warehouse; knowledge discovery from database/data warehouse (KDD) and development of the mechanism of dissemination of knowledge on information networks as per requirements of user groups is gaining importance now a days. Since there is a large number of data collection agencies and equally diverse resources for which the information is collected, it is easy to visualize the heterogeneity of information. The problem is compounded by the fact that there are no common standards that are applied in data collection. Designing data warehouses to integrate the collected information poses a formidable challenge to any data warehouses architect. In order to use the information for planning and decision-making level, data have to be integrated and aggregated properly.

Abstract

Crop cultivation is a complex process and involves a set of activities like land preparation, planting, pest control, irrigation, nutrient management, harvesting, marketing, etc. Entire cycle of crop production requires multitude of information by the farmers. Despite many efforts over the years to disseminate and transfer agriculture knowledge to the stakeholders, large amounts of expertise and knowledge are still out of reach to most of them. Agriculture knowledge may be contained in the corporate database, or it may reside undocumented inside the brain of the researchers or even stored in locations unknown to the majority of the people in the organization. Large sections of the farming community, particularly the rural folk, do not have access to the huge knowledge base acquired by agricultural universities, extension-centers and businesses. In this respect the main challenge is to find this knowledge and apply it to the decision making process involved in agriculture development.

1. Introduction

An expert system is defined as “a computer program designed to model the problem solving ability of a human expert” (Durkin, 1994). It is also defined as “a system that uses human knowledge captured in a computer to solve problems that ordinarily require human expertise”. An intelligent computer program that uses knowledge and inference procedures to solve problems that was difficult enough to acquire significant human expertise for their solutions. It is a computer application that solves complicated problems that would require extensive human expertise. To do so, it simulates the human reasoning process by applying specific knowledge and interfaces. Expert system also uses human knowledge to solve problems that normally

Introduction

ICT may be defined as technologies that facilitate communication and the processing and transmission of information by electronic means. ICT is an acronym that stands for Information Communications Technology and refers to technologies that facilitate communication and the processing of information by electronic means and includes everything from radio and television to telephones (fixed and mobile), computers and the internet. Information and communication has become an increasingly powerful tool for improving the delivery of basic services and enhancing local development opportunities. Recent years have seen increases in the use of ICT in almost all spheres of rural life. Especially, the rural communities require information among others on supply of inputs, innovations, improved technologies, credit, market prices and competitors. Since the concepts, methods and applications involved in ICT are constantly evolving on an almost daily basis. It’s difficult to keep up with the changes - they happen so fast.

Evolution of Computer technology and advent of database concept have provided enormous opportunities to the  scientist, researchers and managers of diverse field  to create, manipulate integrate, link and analyse their data in order to generate information and knowledge. The research projects involving exploration, survey and collection of data, generally create database to maintain and analyze the data.  Almost in every sphere of life and industry this database concept/technology is used in one form or other.  Scientists and researchers of life sciences realized the importance of the database and used this technology to develop databases of different types/groups of living organisms. The database technology has eased the difficulty in designing, developing and maintaining the complex information systems.

Introduction

“Quality” of fish refers to the aesthetic appearance and freshness or degree of spoilage which the fish has undergone or involves safety aspects such as being free from harmful bacteria, parasites or chemicals. “Quality’’ is a term which must be defined in association with an individual product type. For example, it is often thought that the best quality fish is the one which is consumed within the first few hours of post mortem. However, very fresh fish which are in rigor mortis will be of hard texture and difficult to fillet and skin are often unsuitable for smoking or drying. Thus, for the processor, a slightly older fish which have passed through the rigor process are more desirable.

Introduction

Northeastern Region of India consists of eight States, viz., Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim.  The northeastern states are located between geographical ordinates, 21° to 29°30' N and 89°46' to 97°30' E. The region, surrounded almost on all sides by Bhutan, China, Myanmar and Bangladesh, which can be broadly divided into two characteristic zones viz., Mountainous and Plain. Although distinguished in the altitude differences, both the mountain and plain are closely interrelated in terms of natural resource sharing and economic flow. According to the physiographic characters this region is divided into five physiographic units, the Assam Himalayas, the Brahmaputra valley, the Shillong plateau, the Barak valley and the Southeastern hill region. Except the Brahmaputra and Barak valleys in Assam and the Imphal valley in Manipur, the terrain is hilly and mountainous, only making 65% of the northeast an undulating land with elevations ranging from 200 to 900 m above MSL

1. Introduction

Antheraea assamensis is lepidopteron insects of Assam which is commercially utilized for the heritage golden silk “muga”. Rearing of muga silkworm is one of the most significant traditional handloom industries restricted only to the North Eastern Region of India (N.E. India) and plays a major role in the rural economy.  Considering the ecological conditions, food plant distribution, presence of eco-types and species of diverse nature in co-existence, it is speculated that this region is a possible home of origin of Antharaea, from where radiations would have occurred (Neog et. al., 2010). Despite the fact that N.E. India is the original home of muga, earlier studies have shown that the population is declining due to depletion in genetic variability (www.cdfd.org.in/wildsilkbase/info_moths.php).

What is Indigenous Knowledge?

Indigenous knowledge (IK) is the local knowledge which is considered as the social capital of the poor. It is their main asset to invest in the struggle for survival, to produce food, to provide for shelter and to achieve control of their own lives. Indigenous knowledge is a cumulative body of knowledge, practices and manifestations maintained and developed by people with long histories of interaction with their natural environment. It forms the basis for local-level decision-making in agriculture, health, natural resource management and other activities, especially for the poor, and provides problem-solving strategies for communities (World Bank, 1998). IK is a tacit knowledge that is not easily codifiable and unique to a particular culture and society.

Introduction

Indigenous peoples established distinct systems of knowledge, innovation and customary practices from their centuries old interactions with the local biodiversity and environment, relating to the uses and management of local natural resources. Today, this knowledge is looked as an important resource for research and development in different areas such as pharmaceuticals, agriculture, veterinary, jewelry, fashion and cosmetic products. This has led to rampant exploitation of such knowledge disregarding the customary practices and rules of indigenous peoples holding and preserving such knowledge as well as the biodiversity and natural resources. As a consequence, the traditional knowledge is under threat of being misappropriated or lost.

Introduction
 
Intellectual property is a cluster of legally recognized rights associated with innovation and creativity, the works of the mind, as against physical products, land and other tangible resources. Even though it is intangible, intellectual property (IP) is often recognized as personal property, to be sold and traded like other forms of property. Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to various markets, machines, musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and applications. But national laws normally don’t define ‘intellectual property’ as a single property right. Instead, ‘intellectual property’ is used as a convenient general term describing a range of distinct legal rights, relating to literary, artistic and scientific works; performances of performing artists; phonograms, and broadcasts; inventions in all fields of human endeavour; scientific discoveries; industrial designs; trademarks, service marks, and commercial names and designations; protection against unfair competition and all other rights resulting from intellectual activity in the industrial, scientific, literary or artistic fields.

No society can ever desire to achieve a long-term goal of sustainable development unless it builds upon its own knowledge, traditions, ethical foundations and technological endowments. The knowledge of the people particularly in drought and flood prone regions, hill areas, tribal areas and other high risk environments, has to become a building block of new technological improvements. Knowledge happens when our expectations are belied, modified and sometimes confirmed. Because the asymmetry in our expectations is influenced by our access to resources, institutions, technology and cultural platforms, we get different kinds of knowledge, even when we confront similar situations Gupta (2005). In any community living close to nature, asymmetry in knowledge generation and its utilization is inevitable. The experts exist not just in our profession, but in every profession.

I am happy to note that the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, a premier national institute for agricultural research is celebrating the 100th year of its establishment. It is indeed quite fitting that JARI has chosen to celebrate this occasion by organizing a seminar on current scenario in temperate horticulture in Himachal Pradesh which is the second highest producer of temperate fruits in the country, I, therefore consider myself to be privileged to be a key speaker, and express my appreciation and gratitude to the organizers for giving me this honour and opportunity in this very important event.
 
The varied climatic and soil conditions in India provide enormous scope for cultivation of wide range of tropical, sub-tropical and temperate horticultural crops, The production of tropical and sub-tropical horticultural crops is confined to the plains, coastal and root hills of Indian mountain~ whereas, the temperate horticulture is monopoly of the hilly regions of the country. The production of temperate fruits in the country is spread over some fifteen states and union territories situated in the following regions.

Abstract

Himachal Pradesh has achieved a transformation in the horticulture sector during the last fifty years. The total area under fruits, which was only 793 hectares in 1950 has increased to 1.82 lakh Hectares during 2003-04, out of which temperate fruits alone cover an area of 1.20 lakh hectares. Fruit production has also increased from 1200 M.T. in 1950 to 6.92 lakh MT during 2004-05, with temperate fruits accounting for 5.92 lakh MT.  Around 4.64 lakh farmers are estimated to be involved in the fruit production programme and the fruit industry generates a gross domestic income of about Rs. 1000 crores annually. The existing problems and constraints have been identified and the remedial measures required to provide the desired impetus to the horticulture industry of the State, elaborated.

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.

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.

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.

Abstract

The potato research in India was started systematically after the establishment of Central Potato Research Institute (CPRI) in 1949. Forty-one potato varieties having attributes of early, medium and late maturity vis-à-vis resistance to various biotic and abiotic stresses have already been developed indigenously for varied agro-ecoregions in the hills and sub-tropical plains. After the establishment of CPRI, collection of potato germplasm was made mandatory. Presently there are over 2,700 accessions including 133 wild species (related to potato) in the germplasm collection of CPRI. Despite the large collection of potato germplasm at the institute the genetic base of all 41 Indian potato varieties released so far can be traced to only about 50 parents and most of these represent tetraploid potato cultivars while only a few of the exotic diploid wild species have been used in improvement of potato varieties in India. Under utilization of wild species could be mainly due to the pre- and post zygotic crossability barriers inherent in many species of genus solanum. Nevertheless, about seven wild species have been used in potato breeding for introgression of resistance genes for various biotic and abiotic stresses in the improved Indian potato varieties.