eChapters

For most of the past 50 years world food production has outpaced rising demand. World population has doubled since World War II, whereas food production has tripled. In the developing world the calories available per person per day increased from an average of 1,925 calories in 1961 to 2,540 in 1992. World food production has expanded due to the Green Revolution—adoption of crop rotation, the mass production and use of petroleum-based fertilizers and chemical pesticides, expanded irrigation, and the introduction of genetically superior, disease-resistant cultivars. The trend may now be changing for the worse, however. Since about 1990 global grain production has risen only slightly and, despite slower rates of population growth, grain supplies per capita have fallen. In the worst case, Africa now produces nearly 30% less food per person than it did in 1967. As per FAO estimates, world food production would have to double to provide food security for the 8 billion people projected for 2025. By 2050, when world population is projected to be over 9 billion, the situation would be even more challenging.

Introduction

Agriculture is the mainstay of livelihood activity of about 70% of the state’s population. Madhya Pradesh is an agrarian state and the state’s economy is highly dependent on agriculture. Considering the sector’s sensitivity to climatic parameters it can be easily understood that the sector would be highly impacted by any change in these parameters.

Madhya Pradesh has a subtropical climate with three distinct seasons’ viz. winter from December to February, followed by summer season from March to May and rainy season extending from June to October. During winters the mean temperature remains around 10ºC and mean maximum temperature remains 25ºC and the minimum temperature goes down to 1°C in some regions. During summers, the mean minimum temperature is 22ºC and mean maximum is 38ºC. The maximum temperature during summer can go up to 48ºC, especially in May and June which are the hottest months.

INTRODUCTION

Custard apple (Annona squamosa L.) is considered as one of the delicious fruit meant for table purpose. In India, during the year 2014-15 the area under cultivation of custard apple was 29870 ha with production of 228370 tones and productivity of 7.65 tones ha-1 (Anon, 2015a). In Maharashtra, the area increased by 9 to 10 times recently i.e. since 1990 onward, after start of Economic Guarantee Scheme (EGS) of Government of Maharashtra. Hence, Maharashtra is the leading state in custard apple production, wherein during the year 2014-15, the area, production and productivity of custard apple was 8660 ha, 59330 tones and 6.85 tones, respectively. This accounts about 25.98 per cent share of the state in the national production. This is followed by Gujarat, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. (Anon, 2015a). The largest area of nearly one third of the Maharashtra State is in Purandar tahsil of Pune district. An average production of custard apple in Purandar area is about six tons ha–1. The farmers fetch high economic returns at very low input cost. Besides, export quality fruits get very high price ranging from Rs. 70 to 800 kg-1 (Anon, 1998) in foreign countries.

Case Study    :    Orissa Super Cyclone 1999

Data Mining is the process of automatic discovery of novel and understandable models and patterns from large amounts of data. Bioinformatics is the science of storing, analyzing and utilizing information from biological data such as sequences, molecules, gene expressions, and pathways. Development of novel data mining methods will play a fundamental role in understanding these rapidly expanding sources of biological data. Data mining techniques are an automated means of reducing the complexity of data in large bioinformatics databases and of discovering meaningful and useful patterns and relationships in data. Bioinformatics, the application of computational techniques to analyze the information associated with biomolecules on a large-scale, has now firmly established itself as a discipline in molecular biology, and encompasses a wide range of subject areas from structural biology, genomics to gene expression studies. It provides an introduction and overview of the current state of the field. The main principles that underpin bioinformatics analyses look at the Data Mining in Bioinformatics and databases that are commonly used, and finally examine some of the studies that are being conducted, particularly with reference to transcription regulatory systems.

Introduction
Recently, there is a great need to analyze and exploit the huge amount of biological data information generated through high throughput modern technologies like phenotyping, allelic variation, gene expression, chromatography, DArT, molecular marker etc. Principal component analysis (PCA) has stronghold on modern data analysis - A black box that is widely used but poorly understood. The goal of this article is to dispel the magic behind this black box and to focus on building a solid intuition for how and why principal component analysis works in huge numbers of high throughput biological data set. It is a versatile and easy-to-use multivariate mathematical statistical method (Jolliffe et al, 2003) developed to extract maximal information from large data matrices containing numerous columns and rows. It also makes possible the elucidation of the relationship between the columns and rows of any data matrix without being one of the dependent variable. So the PCA is a projection method representing the original data in smaller dimensions.

Data mining is becoming an increasingly important tool to transform the data into information. In recent years, data mining has been widely used in area of Bioinformatics for better understanding of gene expression, drug design, and other emerging problems in genomics and proteomics. Data mining is used to understand gene expression analysis, searching and understanding of protein mass spectroscopy data, 3D structural and functional analysis and mining of DNA and protein sequences for structural and functional motifs. For the first several hundred years of research in biology, the main bottleneck to scientific progress was data collection. Our new found data-richness, however, has shifted this bottleneck from collection to analysis. Biomedical literatures have been increased at the exponential rate. To find the useful and needed information from such a huge data set is a daunting task for users. Text mining is a powerful tool to solve this problem and it is used for biological knowledge discovery.

Algae refer to an assemblage of polyphyletic organism that conducts oxygen evolving photosynthesis other than land plants. They are distributed widely throughout India in the sea, in fresh water and in moist situations on land. Algae also form an important component of biodiversity of Andaman and Nicobar Group of Islands. Database for Algae resources of Andaman and Nicobar Islands are created with an aim of providing an information pool to the researchers working in fields related to fresh water and marine water algae in Andaman and Nicobar Group of Islands. About 313 fresh water algal species belonging to 15 families and 57 marine algal species belonging to 18 families has included in this database among which 40 species has been found to be first time reported in India. Algae have a wide application in a variety of Industries such as Food, Fodder, and Fertilizer etc. They are also important sources of Protein, Iodine, Vitamins, Minerals and Substances of Antibiotic Nature.

Biodiversity conservation and sustainable use has, for many people, become associated mainly with issues related to plants and wild animals. Although much less discussed, the loss of farm animal genetic resources may well be much more serious than in crops because the gene pool is smaller and very few wild relatives remain. The fact that 32% of livestock breeds worldwide are at risk of becoming extinct and that the rate of extinction continues to accelerate (FAO, 2000) is thus a serious cause for concern. Animals of different characteristics and hence outputs suit differing local community needs.

The union territory of A & N Islands constitutes the farthest and the remotest part of Indian union. The islands are situated in the Bay of Bengal surrounded by sea. The neighboring countries are Burma in north east and Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia in south east. The Union territory of A & N Islands is situated between 60 and 140 north latitude and 920 and 940 east longitude forming a broken row of continuous islands from. North to South direction. They can be divided into two groups namely Andaman and Nicobar groups. The dreaded 100 channel which is about 145 Kms wide and 400 fathoms deep, separates the two groups

• Database
• Data Model
• Database Software
• DBMS Facility 
• Architecture for a DBMS
• Data Modeling
• Components of a Data Mode
• RDBMS (Relational Database Management System)
• Client/Server Model of Computing
• Entity Relationship Diagram (E-R diagram)
• Entity Relationship Diagram Notations - Front-end and Back-end
• Codd’s Rules
• SQL - Structured Query Language
• Data Definition Language (DDL)
• Data Manipulation Language (DML)
• DCL
• Data Control Language
• Transaction Control (TCL)

Introduction

The recent revolution in genomics and bioinformatics has caught the world by storm. The issues surrounding the human genome, including the analysis of genetic variation, access to genetic information and the privacy of the individual have fuelled public debate and extended way beyond the scientific and technical literature. During the past few years, bioinformatics, defined as the computational handling and processing of genetic information, has become one of the most highly visible fields of modern science. A flood of data means that many of the challenges in biology are now challenges in computing. Bioinformatics, the application of computational techniques to analyse the information associated with bio-molecules on a large-scale, has now firmly established itself as a discipline in molecular biology, and encompasses a wide range of subject areas from structural biology, genomics to gene expression studies. In this chapter we provide an introduction and overview of the current state of the field.

INTRODUCTION
    
The date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) is considered to be oldest among the domesticated tree fruits. It considered a symbol of life in desert because it tolerate high temperature, drought and salinity more than many other fruits. Date palm fruits are eaten as raw dates (Khalal stage), Soft dates (Tamar stage) and dry dates (Chhuhara). Different processed products viz sugar, starch, vinegar, juice, toffies, wine, chutney, jam, pickels etc. are prepared from date fruits. Leaves of date palm trees are utilized for preparation of baskets, brooms, ropes, building materials, fuel and paper. The plantation is also useful for stabilization and maintenance of ecological balance in the desert regions

• Introduction
• Types of DSS
• Scope of DSS
• Benefits of DSS 
• Common Uses of Decision Support Systems
• Decision Support System for Farm Management

The role of bioinformatics in genomics and molecular biology research can be likened to the role of intelligence gathering in battlefield. Intelligence is clearly very important in leading to a victory in the battlefield. Computational algorithms are the heart of bioinformatics as they enable predictions, understanding and interpretation of the data generated from laboratory experimental research carried by biologist. This article discusses one such approach called Decision tree induction and its application for generating rules from a dataset extracted from biological databases.

Decision Tree (DT) is one of the most popular choices for learning from feature based examples. They are especially attractive in data mining environment for several reasons. First due to their intuitive representation, the resulting classification model is easy to assimilate by humans. Second, DT does not require any parameter setting from the user and thus are especially suited for exploratory knowledge discovery. Third DT can be constructed relatively fast and accuracy of DT is comparable or superior to other classification models.

3.1.Processes
                    
    Leaching                    
    Fragmentation/Comminution
    Catabolism                    
    Decomposition models
                
3.2. Patterns
                    
    Litter decomposition
    Root decomposition                    
    Limit values for decomposition            
    Decomposition pattern in ecosystems

1    Dental formulae and eruption of tooth

2    Ageing based on rings of the horn

3    General appearance of animal

4    Longevity of different animals

4.1    Hydraulic Formulae/Head Losses in Pipes
    
4.2    Lateral Design
    
4.3    Sub-main Design
    
4.4    Design Charts
    
4.5    Main Line Design
    
4.6    Farm Drip System Design Examples
    Questions & Problems
        
References

Keeping pace with latest technologies Central Institute of Freshwater Aquaculture (CIFA) has attempted to develop the following three databases on the following aspects for quick retrieval of information resources. The brief description of the databases is presented below for easy comprehension.

CD-ROM Database on Socio-Economic Aspects of Carp Culture in Kolleru Lake (Pictorial)

In the era of 21st century world is progressing fast towards the electronic media of communication and the real revolution has been brought about in the information technology. It has revolutionized the collection, storage and retrieval of information very speedily and accurately. One of the IT tools like CD-ROM (Compact Disc Read Only Memory) plays an important role in storing the huge data and can be easily carried to remote places. Since it is lightweight, pocket sized and can hold about 660 megabytes of data which is equivalent to 3 lakh pages. CD-ROM is a high capacity optical disc. It is 12 cm diameter, made of durable plastic with a reflective metal coating and lacquered surface. Considering all these advantages an attempt has been made to develop a database on socio-economic aspects of carp culture in Kolleru Lake which is immensely helpful to all scientific and farming community (Roy et al., 2004).

1. Introduction

Kiwi fruit (KF) is very much acceptable for preservation by freeze-drying (FD) technique, since it has very much health benefits such as low calorific value, low glycemic index (GI), more vitamins (particularly vitamin C), maximum load of potassium, presence of variety of pigments, few important enzymes, low allergic response (AR) and finally it is rich in natural antioxidants, polyphenols. It is translucent, green pulp and many black seeds arranged nicely with covered by hairy and brown skin. The KF seeds are small sizes and black colored surround inner circularly through the whole pulp. It gives a nice crunch during consumption and provides a number of essential nutrients. Therefore, it will be remembered that seeds cannot be discarded during processing of KF unlike other fruit (jamun etc. ) seeds.

1.     Length and Size
2.     Volume
3.     Weight