eChapters

1. Introduction

One of the most recent running questions of agricultural extension is the potential of rural areas to benefit from mobile communication. Actually, today the increase of the use of mobile phones (MP) is even more rapid in both urban and rural world.

Abstract

In Cyprus the National Agricultural Research System is mainly under the authority of the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environment (MANRE). One of its departments, namely the Agricultural Research Institute (ARI), is the only recognized public institution engaged exclusively in applied agricultural research, covering the wider domain of crop and animal production. Another department of the MANRE, the Department of Agriculture (DA) has as its main mission the development of the agricultural and livestock sector through the education and guidance of the farmers, the planning and the implementation of development programmes. 

Abstract

Knowledge and communication is an important resource for agriculture and can contribute substantially to ensure food security and sustainability by creating awareness and skill development through access to information. The initial and most prominent player of knowledge delivery is public sector extension services, which from past few years, are usually criticized for their ineffective targeting, poor reach and the huge administrative cost of delivering information. Since past few years, the drastic increase in mobile penetration even in rural areas has lead to evolution of ICT-based extension services models to disseminate agriculture related information.

Abstract

In the past decade, many knowledge-centric mobile phone initiatives in Indian agriculture have emerged, either substituting or supporting extension services by providing farmers with access to agricultural information. These knowledge-centric mobile phone platforms have the potential to reach many farmers directly with timely and accessible content. But the content that these deliver has more relevance if it is localized and context specific, as this improves the value and actionability of the information, which can have important impacts on farm management. The localization of content is influenced by how the projects access, assess, apply, and deliver content.

Abstract

The chapter examines the relationship between the agricultural value chain and mobile apps. Using email survey data from mobile app developers, supplemented with basic desk research, the chapter reviews and analyzes 55 mobile apps based on their location within the value chain, the format of content delivery, the types of device used, the stage of deployment as of  2012, the type of business model used, and the geographic focus of the app. The analysis generally reveals an even distribution of apps within the three main components of the agricultural value chain but when it comes to the sub-categories within the agricultural value chain, skewed distribution was observed. Feature phones remain the dominant device for delivering agricultural information to users, however, increasing number of smartphone-specific applications gaining market. Most of the devices use text format for content delivery with voice, image and video as supplements.

Abstract

Agriculture, which was once a livelihood for millions, is now turning into a not -so-profitable occupation. The interest has reduced especially among the youth because of its input intensive nature. Among all other  things, the most important input in profitable and sustainable agriculture is timely information. However, with the increasing value of the ratio of farmers to extension personnel, getting timely information is a challenge. Then again, rationally used, we are surrounded by communication devices and the most essential and affordable of all are mobile phones. They have made communication easier, faster, affordable and profitable. The boom in mobile based agro-advisory services in the developing countries around the world has found its own subscriber base among the bottom of the pyramid farmers in rural areas and has been developing their economic conditions. Their services range from crop information, market price alerts to holistic agricultural information which are available free of cost and under subscription.

Abstract

Agriculture continues to be the most important sector of the Indian economy and agriculture is a  more or less a compulsion for livelihood of millions of farmers. Land and water resources have almost reached their limits, price of commodities are fluctuating almost every day, profits are negligible for most of the marginal and small farmers and most of all getting information is cumbersome. In present day agriculture, soft resources like knowledge and skills are as important as hard resources like inputs, and sometimes more important. But estimates indicate that 60 per cent of farmers do not access any source of information for advanced agricultural technologies resulting in huge adoption gap. The requirement of field level extension personnel is estimated to be about 1.3 -1.5 million against the present availability of about 0.1 million personnel. The mobile phone comes into the picture here.

Wool is a natural fiber and considered as renewable, sustainable and environmental friendly. It is capable to keep the body warm and can be utilized as casual bears and also in formal bears and provide comfort to the human body in both of the active and passive situations. So to maintain a standard quality of wool for fabric development it is utmost important to test the wool fiber for certain qualities. Testing of wool fiber is also important to retain the unique physical and chemical properties of wool which makes this fiber versatile. Fiber quality is in real sense is a set of characteristics and defects in the fleece; both inherited and acquired, which influence its end use. The term quality testing includes a process of critical examination of material to draw the information’s related to qualitative or quantitative aspects of wool fibers. There are number of standard test procedures are in prevalence but most commonly followed test procedures for wool are American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM), British standards, Indian Standard Institution (ISI) or International Wool Textile Organization (IWTO) etc.

Shearing is an operation of clipping the wool from sheep body. It is essential to get the wool from animals as well as to provide comfort to the sheep and enhance the economic status of sheep farm. The time of shearing is twice in a year preferably once at beginning of summer (march-April) and second at the start of winter (September – October). However, for veterinary reasons and other requirements of animals, shearing can be performed any time.

Wool is a fibre basically composed of amino acids and have excellent absorbency, moisture regain capacity, tend to warm the human body if used in form of cloths and others, good in elasticity and resiliency but poor in resistance to alkali but acid tolerance is good. To get better utilization of wool, they may be classified into various categories based on their origin, fleece quality, fineness of wool fibres etc.

Wool is a thick and wavy animal fiber makes fibrinous protective covering of sheep. There are 170 different types of proteins are found in wool but the major and foremost protein is keratin. It is insoluble in nature and forms most of the part of wool. True wool fiber is basically modified hair that is not shed like the hair of most farm animals and medulla is absent in true wool. Wool contains excessively scaly surface but hair surface is mostly smooth, less elastic. The matured keratinized fiber extruding above the skin is considered dead tissue. Wool fiber is basically originated from follicle situated in dermis or middle layer of skin. Wool fiber is elastic, hygroscopic, retains warmness, durable, non inflammable and transmits ultra-violet light.

India is one of the chief carpet wool producing and exporting countries of the world. A large quantity of carpet wool is exported to the developed countries. Wool production in Indian subcontinent is mainly dependant on distinct type of sheep producing wool in a particular geographical area. For example small and course wool is produced by Bikaneri breed in North Western India, course wool by Deccani breed and hair type breed by Mandya breed in Peninsular India and fine wool is produced in Himalayan region. In general, tropical breeds of sheep are mainly producing course wool which is highly suitable for carpet manufacture. Most of the Indian sheep breeds are producing low fleece yield. The annual total yield of greasy wool is in the range of 1-1.5 Kg. Overall great quantity of wool is produced in southern hemisphere but consumption is in northern hemisphere.

Animal Fibers                   The animal materials like wool, hair, fur, mohair and silk used for weaving, knitting or felting into a fabric are                                                      generally termed as animal fibers. Animals used for the purpose are sheep, goat, llama, alpaca, camel, vicuna                                                and silk worm.

The sanitation word is derived from a Latin word sanitas, meaning “health.” In true sense sanitation is the creation and maintenance of hygiene and healthful conditions in abattoir or meat processing plant. So that produced food provides full nutrients with minimal contaminations and hazards to the human health. It creates the aesthetic environment in the workplace which ultimately enhances the work efficiency and satisfaction to the workers. It helps in maintenance of clean environment, less pollution, proper waste disposal and improves ecological balance. It is a prerequisite of food safety, good hygienic practices and total quality management.

Abattoir is a structure meant to recover the edible portions of slaughtered animals for human consumption. These structures are used to cater the need of domestic purposes as well as some of them are utilized for export purposes. The demand of Indian meat and meat products is increasing day by day not only in our country but also around the globe. Therefore, millions (about 15 million cattle and buffalo and 1 million sheep and goat) of food animals are slaughtered every year to meet the current demand. Such large scale slaughter of food animals generates huge amount of wastes but due to lack of proper sanitary measures in majority of slaughter houses of our country their wastes not only deteriorate the hygiene of meat and meat products but also pose a potential threat to the environment. Therefore, it is an urgent need for safe and proper disposal of slaughter house and meat processing waste for food safety and human health. It is also important to protect the environment and to improve the quality and hygiene of meat and meat products.

India is bestowed by nature with a vast livestock resources comprising of 190 million cattle, 108 million buffalo, 135.17 million goats, 65.06 million sheep, 10.29 million pigs, 729.2 million poultry, 0.29 million mithun and 0.07 million yak (Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries, 2014). The livestock sector is an important segment of agriculture and contributes nearly 25.6 percent of value in agriculture, fishing and forestry sector. The total share of livestock in GDP of India is 4.11 percent and meat is an important sector to generate foreign revenue by export. The share can further be extended by utilization of animal by-products because it is a sector of livestock neglected most. It is an old saying that ‘each and everything comes from animals can be utilized except last cry of animals’.

Stomach and intestines are important part of animal body.  Stomach mainly constitutes rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasums. In which rumen, reticulum and omasum are utilized in form of edible uses, petfood and meat meal while abomasums can be converted into petfood and meat meal but abomasums of suckling calf can be utilized in extraction of rennet. Sheep rumen can also be utilized as haggis casings and pig stomach can be processed as petfood, pepsin, haggis casings and chitterlings. Organic content obtained from stomach and intestines can be utilized in form of compost, fertilizer and sometimes as feed. Intestine is also constitutes large intestine (colon, caecum and rectum), small intestine and oesophagus. In which large intestine and small intestine if not in condition to convert in casings can be utilized by rendering in form of meat meal.

Bones of the animal body makes a skeleton system and helps in locomotion and support soft tissues. The proportion of bones in animal body varies with the animal species as they contribute 12-28 percent in cattle and buffalo, 17-35 percent in sheep and lambs, 50percent in bobby calves, 25 percent in veal calves, 12-20 percent in pigs and 8-17 percent in poultry. As the age advances bones becomes rigid due to ossification of cartilages but in older age bones becomes brittle and fragile due to reduction in bone organic matter.

Hides and skin are the important and widely used animal by-products of slaughter house industry. Human beings are utilizing animal skins since time immorial and nomadic people still depend upon them for shelter, clothing, weapons, food containers etc. In general on live weight basis yield of hide is 7 percent while skin is around 11 percent.  Though it is also obtained from the fallen animals but the superior quality hide is always of slaughtered animals. Source wise slaughtered animals account 20-25 percent of hide and 80 percent of skin whereas fallen animals contributes around 75-80 percent of hide and 20 percent of skin. So the major sources for hide are fallen animals and skin is from slaughtered animals.

Blood is a first by-product of animal slaughter house. It accounts about 5-7 percent of animals live weight. It is highly nutritious material particularly rich in protein (17-18%) and essential nutrients. Blood is a rich source of amino acids like leucine, lysine, valine, phenylalanine, histidine etc. It is also rich in haem iron which is biologically most available form of iron. Protein efficiency ratio of plasma is 2.5 while 1.0 for globin. It contains about 80 percent water and responsible for effluent problems. It is a great source of pollution because BOD₅ of whole blood is 250000 mg/litre. It should be collected and processed as soon as possible because whole blood clots easily and is capable to clogs the drainage system, grease traps and septic tank of meat plant or abattoir.

Term rendering is generally used to recover the fat from animal material by heating. However, today rendering word is applied in broad sense in by-products industry to recover stock feed, fertilizers and fats from slaughter house offals, parts and condemned material from animal body. Today many products are recovered by rendering process and can be utilized in different ways. Some of them may be categorized as edible and inedible. The major examples are lard and tallow which may be edible and inedible depending on the processing. Other valuable products include chemicals, meat meals and bone meals. To get these valuable products, various animal by-products are processed like viscera, bones, trimmings, dead stock, feather and other poultry materials.

The vast livestock population requires proper harvesting of animal by-products to generate income to the farmers and to provide the employment to marginally educated masses. The density of livestock in our country demands atleast one animal by-product processing plant in each fifty kilometer range. Proper utilization of animal by-products will also serve in reduction of environmental pollution through slaughter house. Ultimately image of the meat industry can be enhanced by proper utilization of animal by-products. The proper disposal of animal slaughter house and by-products waste is further necessary to reduce the environmental pollution and to enhancement the livelihood of neighourers.

By-products or offal’s are basically every part or particle which is not included in dressed carcass. It can also be explained as everything produced from the animals except dressed meat is considered as by-products. Meat industry now demands the full utilization of by-products to make the industry profitable and economically sustainable. It is also important for environmental management and to enhance the social image of the meat industry. The yield of animal by-products ranges between 50-60% of the live weight.

Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP)

Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point is a comprehensive food safety system of food which starts from production to the ultimate consumption. HACCP monitors each and every step of production process, identify the specific hazards, implement the effective control programme and also verify the procedure. However, it is not a zero risk programme and there is possibility of risk of hazards in the process but the theme of programme is to minimize the risk of hazards upto a level which will be considered as safe. Thus HACCP programme is termed as risk management tool. It involves the management of all types of hazards like microbiological, chemical and physical.

Meat cutting and fabrication is a skilled process in which separation of carcass into wholesale primal cuts is done to facilitate meat trade requirements, consumer preference and easy handling to the butchers. The person engaged in cutting and fabrication of carcass cuts must be skilled and expert in their job. He/she must have the expert knowledge of carcass configurations and location of retail cuts in animal carcasses. To obtain good quality retail cuts, carcass should be essentially chilled and temperature of meat cutting room should be 15-20oC with relative humidity of about 80%.

Levitical Law of Old Testament initially authorized meat animals for food of man who had to part the hoof and chew the cud. So man started eating the animals and their edible parts of animals who consume grass and other arable crops.  Examples were cattle, buffalo, sheep, goat, pigs, horses, deer, reindeer, yak, camel etc. Now poultry have become major meat producing species while rabbit, guinea pigs, various game animals and birds provides substantial meat. Advancement of knowledge on quality and safety enforced the man to evaluate and grade the live animals and carcasses for values decision in marketing.

Slaughtering and dressing of different kinds of animals and birds is an age old practice. Initially slaughtering was done by cutting the throat or stabbing the throat or breast. But today’s world of progress and scientific evolution slaughter methods has undergone material changes. Scientifically there are two essentials of slaughtering i.e. humane slaughter to avoid unnecessary pain and sufferings to the animals and complete bleeding. Legislations require stunning of animals to render them unconscious before bleeding except in Jewish and Muslim slaughter. The animals subjected to slaughter must be clean which is generally achieved by cleaning. The premises and transportation vehicles should also be maintained in good hygienic and sanitary conditions. All the facilities required for slaughter animals and birds arranged well in advance. In commercial plants and export units, slaughtering and dressing is performed on overhead rails but for domestic use, booth and simple rails may serve the purpose due to low throughput. The requirements and systems of overhead rail are mentioned in chapter 1. Some of the requirements are listed in following table

Humane slaughter is an act of killing the food animals in such a way as to cause the minimum stress or distress to the animal. To achieve this objective animal must be rendered insensible instantaneously and remain insensitive to pain until there is a complete loss of brain responsiveness due to exsanguination. The unconsciousness in animals is induced by stunning procedures which are varying in number. The method of stunning primarily based on species, breed, age, sex, kind and mental state of animals. Stunning is essential to safeguard the feelings and anxieties of animals. It facilitates maximum bleeding from the animals because animal becomes unconscious after stunning. To make animal unconscious before bleeding is not only essential for animal welfare point of view but it is legislation in many countries.

Slaughter is an act of killing or destruction of animals for food purpose and includes all processes and operations on all such animals in order to prepare it for being slaughtered. It is an expert act requires expertise and willingness. Slaughter is necessarily to be performed in a slaughter house recognized or licensed by authority empowered under law for the time being in force to do so.  Only authorized animals are to be slaughtered for food purpose and restricted animals or animals prohibited for slaughter should not be converted into meat in any case. Animals in pregnancy, has offspring less than three months or under the age of three months, animals not certified by veterinarian for fitness should never be slaughtered. Slaughterman should also have a valid license or authorization issued by municipal or other authority. The persons below eighteen years of age and suffering from communicable or infectious diseases shall not be permitted to slaughter an animal.

Post-mortem examination is a thorough examination or inspection of all relevant parts of slaughtered animals including carcass and organs by qualified veterinarian immediately after slaughter and evisceration to find out the possible changes and lesions that indicate unsuitability of the meat for food. Postmortem examination should be carried out as soon as possible after carcass dressing otherwise carcass gets set and the examination of lymph nodes becomes difficult particularly in beef and pork in winters.

Ante-mortem examination includes all procedure or tests conducted by a competent person on live animals for the purpose of judgement of safety, suitability and disposition. It is an integral step to be performed by qualified veterinarian during conversion of animal to carcass for wholesome meat production. The animals are examined for cruelty due to overcrowding or suffocation or any other inflicted injuries and stress during transportation or otherwise, because it not only directly affects the quality of meat but also downgrade the carcass. Ante-mortem inspection ensures that only healthy animals are slaughtered and wholesome meat reaches to the consumers. A complete record of the ante-mortem inspection of all animals received in the abattoir should be maintained to ascertain that animal’s health status at the time of slaughter. Antemortem examination not only ensures the health animals entry into slaughter house but also assist in postmortem examination. It is also important to make a decision on certain diseases based on symptoms because they may not show the postmortem lesions for final judgment. Ante-mortem inspection has twofold functions as it enables veterinarians to protect public health and to assess the welfare conditions in which the animal is placed.

The aim of pre-slaughter care of animals is to arrange physiologically normal animals for slaughtering without loss of weight and to minimize stress to the animals. Pre-slaughter care of meat animals includes proper handling of animals during loading, unloading, transportation, lairage care and handling of animals just prior to slaughter. Thus due care must be adopted in this stage not only for welfare point of view but also for production of good quality meat. Proper care and handling is also essential to reduce the chances of bruises, cuts, tears and deformities on the animals/birds body.

To streamline the slaughter activities throughout country and to produce the quality meat for domestic as well export market, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) formulated certain standards related to abattoir and other food items. It also harmonizes the standards as per the requirement of importing country. So that traders can easily meet out the demand of importing country. Under the standard provisions of BIS, each and every aspect of abattoir as well as its processing aspect is very well described in these standards. These standards are written and documented and easily available to know how about their implementations.

Abstract

This paper focuses on the paradigm shift that our information economy is witnessing from generic leadership to electronic leadership in a disruptive, holistic, fast changing and turbulent business environment consisting of algorithms, programs and codes, to track user movement over the digital platform. The organizations need not to choose one best way to lead in order to gain the momentum over its competitor’s. In the digital age, the organizations have started tracking user over web, his movements, his browsing information pertaining to his liking’s and disliking are been used by the leaders in order to strategize and the greatest digital minds are providing support to these organizational leaders for strategizing and flooding user with choices based on his likings. Moreover the future leadership will get more and more personalized and advanced with a conglomerate blend of cutting edge technology, leadership and strategy within the existing paraphernalia. This paper suggests a new leadership model that is the coded model, wherein the leadership gets more and more personalized based on the codes that traps user movements and his behavior over the web.

Tea is the most important non-alcoholic beverage worldwide gaining further popularity as an important ‘health drink’. It is consumed as a morning drink by 2/3^rd of world population. Tea was used initially as a medicine and subsequently as beverage and now has proven to be a potential raw material for pharmaceutical industry. Tea is mainly consumed in the form of ‘fermented tea’ or ‘black tea’, ‘non-fermented’ or ‘green tea’ and semi-fermented or ‘oolong tea’ are also popular in Japan and China. Green leaves are also used as vegetables such as ‘leppet tea’ in Burma and ‘meing tea’ in Thailand.

Natural rubber, cis-l,4 polyisoprene, produced in the milky cytoplasm (latex) of specialized cells called laticifers in certain plants is one of most important biological macromolecules, which is used as an industrial raw material for the manufacture of a variety of products. Natural rubber is found in the latex of over 2000 species of plants belonging to 311 genera under 79 families. However, Hevea brasiliensis, also known as Para rubber tree after the Brazilian port of Para, is the only commercial source of natural rubber mainly because of its abundance in latex, quality and convenience of harvesting. Hevea was first used as a source of rubber by the French.

Palmyra (Borassus flabellifer L.) is a tropical dioecious palm adapted to arid zone tracts. Though it is a versatile plant which yields many edible and non-edible products it is a less exploited species. It is used for sap, fruit, seed, leaf and fiber and timber products. From nutritional point of view, fruit pulp and seed shoot flour are the most important.Successful promotion of these as foods for general consumption depends on subjecting the fruit pulp to a debittering process, and the seed shoot flour, to initial detoxification processes (Thabrew and Jansz, 2004). Palmyra palms are the most numerous palms in the world after coconut palm (Fox, 1977). Despite this, they are the least studied of all the palms.

The oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) is recognised as the cheapest edible oil-yielding crop and has become one of the major oil crops in the world. The most productive oil-bearing crop, oil palm yields about three times the oil yield of coconut, seven times that of rapeseed, and ten times that of soybean. In terms of world production, palm oil maintains second place after soybean as a source of vegetable oil and has overtaken other crops such as rapeseed, sunflower, groundnut, and cottonseed. Under good agricultural management, a hectare of oil palm yields 5 to 7 tonnes of oil / year (Henson, 1991). The crop is unique in producing 2 distinct types of oil- palm oil and palm kernel oil- used for culinary and industrial purposes. Being rich in b-carotene, palm oil contributes substantially to nutritional and energy requirements of masses.

Coffee (Coffea species) occupies a pride of place, in the international trade of commodities, next to petroleum in trade volume and money value. Coffee is also the second important popular beverage for its aroma and mild stimulant action. Its dried beans are roasted, ground and brewed to make a stimulating & refreshing beverage. Its production forms the backbone of more than 60 developing nations. Use of coffee has evolved from original chewing of leaves and beans of the plant to relieve pain, hunger and fatigue to the present more sophisticated uses, like espresso and decaffeinated coffees. Its use was first discovered in Arabia around mid-15th century.

Coconut is the most beautiful and useful of palms known to mankind. Coconut is unique, producing a host of products and by products with distinctive applications at home and in industry. It is essentially an oil seed crop providing all amenities for human life, which include food, energetic beverage, medicine, fibre, wood, shell and a variety of raw materials for production of array of products of commercial importance. In view of its versatile uses and affinity to Indian culture, it is rightly called the “tree of heaven” or “Kalpavriksha”.

Cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) is the third important beverage crop grown for its seeds known as beans, used mainly in chocolate industry. It is the source of cocoa butter and cocoa mass.

Cashew (Anacardium occidentale L.) is an export-oriented crop grown for its nuts, a true drupe. Often referred as ‘wonder nut’, it is highly delicious and nutritive. Its nutritional composition compares well with almond, hazel nut and walnut. It is a zero-cholesterol nut with high content of unsaturated fatty acids, proteins and carbohydrates with a right combination of amino acids, vitamins and minerals. Kernels extracted from nuts are often consumed as such or used in confectionery items and various kinds of dishes. Kernel oil of pale yellow colour is used in pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. Cashew nut shell liquid (CNSL) extracted from its shell has many industrial applications - for making paints, resins, flame-retardants, etc. Testa covering the kernel, rich in tannin, can be an acceptable substitute for wattle bark tannin in leather industry. Cashew apple, the pseudo-fruit, is rich in vitamin C. It is used to cure scurvy, diarrhea, uterine complaints and dropsy.

Arecanut palm (Areca catechu L.) is the source of common masticatory nut, popularly known as arecanut, betelnut, or supari. It is used extensively in India by all sections of people as masticatory, and is an essential requisite for several religious and social ceremonies.

Commercial crops include a variety of high value plantation crops, which play a vital role in the agricultural economy and export trade of many developing and developed countries (Table 1). Tea, coffee, cocoa, rubber, coconut, arecanut, oil palm, cashew, palmyra and cardamom are the major crops grown on a plantation scale. These crops are perennial in nature and the cultivation is labour intensive, generating considerable employment opportunity during on farm operations and off farm processing activities. The most obvious characteristic is that plantations are monocultures; the same species occupying large contiguous area usually in even aged stands. Exceptions are coconut, arecanut, cocoa and coffee, which are grown either as mono crop or as multiple crops. These crops are grown in humid tropics, mainly between 20°N and 20°S of equator in an area of 35.7 million ha yielding about 74.4 million tonnes of produce and contributing US $ 11 billion to global trade during 2002.

13.1 Introduction
In the previous chapters, we have considered different tests of significance based on normal distribution, F distribution, student’s t distribution and Chi-square (χ2) distribution which are frequently applied by the users of different disciplines of applied sciences and social sciences. In this chapter some more tests of significance are considered which have not been covered in those chapters. These tests are also based on t, F, Fisher’s z transformation, χ2 and some other test statistics are also discussed one by one in the following sections.

12.1 Chi-Square Variate
The square of a standard normal variate is known as a chi – square variate or chi square statistic with one degree of freedom.

11.1 Introduction
In the preceding chapter 10, we have discussed in detail, the test procedures for which it has been assumed that the sample size n is large, (i.e n >,30). Those tests are also known as approximate tests or z tests. But in case when sample size n is small i.e. n<30, the approximate test fails to deal with such problem and we apply the theory of exact sample, for small sample tests. The exact sample tests however can be applied to large samples also though the converse is not plausible. In all the exact sample tests, the basic assumption is that the parent population is normally distributed.
In this part we will discusse in details the exact sample tests (based on exact sampling distributions namely snedekor’s F, student’s t and chi square (χ2) distributions. These distributions will be simply introduced in short because main emphasis has to be given only on the test procedures based on them.

10.1 Normal Distribution
The normal distribution is the most widely used distribution in statistics. Almost all biological data including the agricultural data eg. crop yield, plant height, seed weight, seed size, protein percent in pulse, oil content in an oil seed etc are assumed to be normally distributed. In practice their distribution is rarely verified. In distribution theory, for large values of n, the number of trial (or sample size), almost all the distributions e.g. Binomial, poission, Negative binomial, chi square, student’s t, and Snedenor’s F distributions etc. are very closely approximated by normal distribution. It is a continuous distribution with mean and variance as its two parameters.

9.1 Introduction
In the preceeding chapter, we have studied the estimation part of statistical decision (inference) infered about the parameters of the population on the basis of information available in the sample observations drawn from the parent population under study. In the present chapter we discuss the problems related with the tests of statistical hypothesis and its significance about the population parameters under study. For understanding of the subject matter considered in this chapter, very clearly and easily, one must be familier with the statistical terminologies used in the subject matter. Hence we discuss the various notable terminologies with some suitable examples in a simple way for better understanding.

8.1 Introduction
We have already discussed in details how different sampling schemes can be employed to draw the representative samples suitable to many kinds of population whose sampling units differ in nature. From practical view points, however, it is often more important to be able to make decision about certain unknown characteristics of the population on the basis of informations available in the representative samples which are drawn from the parent populations. Such decisions taken, are known as the “Statistical decisions”. For example, we may wish to decide on the basis of sample data whether (i) One educational system is better than the other or not, (ii) A given six faced die is unbiased (balanced) or not, (iii) A new insecticide is really effective to control the attack of insects or not? etc. Such problems are dealt with in the theory of statistical decisions which uses the principles of sampling theory.