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Organic farming has undergone rapid growth in recent years across various agricultural and livestock sectors, including poultry production. The escalation of health concerns stemming from the presence of numerous medications and pesticide residues in conventional products has underscored the importance of ensuring the quality of egg and meat products. In this global context, there is a notable surge in demand for organic meat, prompting nations to explore organic poultry production.

What is Least Square Method?

The Least Squares Method is used to derive a generalized linear equation between two variables, one of which is independent and the other dependent on the former. The value of the independent variable is represented as the x-coordinate and that of the dependent variable is represented as the y-coordinate in a two-dimensional cartesian coordinate system. Initially, known values are marked on a plot. The plot obtained at this point is called a scatter plot. Then, we try to represent all the marked points as a straight line or a linear equation. The equation of such a line is obtained with the help of the least squares method. This is done to get the value of the dependent variable for an independent variable for which the value was initially unknown. This helps us to fill in the missing points in a data table or forecast the data. The method is discussed in detail as follows. The least-squares method was officially discovered and published by Adrien-Marie Legendre (1805), though it is usually also co-credited to Carl Friedrich Gauss (1809), who contributed significant theoretical advances to the method.

Least Square Method Definition

The least-squares method can be defined as a statistical method that is used to find the equation of the line of best fit related to the given data. This method is called so as it aims at reducing the sum of squares of deviations (residual part) as much as possible. The line obtained from such a method is called a regression line.

Trade in fruit and vegetable products has been among the most dynamic areas of national as well as international agricultural trade, stimulated by rising incomes and growing consumer interest in product variety, freshness, convenience, and year-round availability. Advances in production, postharvest handling, processing, and logistical technologies—along with increased levels of international investments have played a facilitating role.

4.1. Global Trade of Processed Fruits & Vegetables

4.1.1. Country Wise Trends of Export in Value-Added Fruits

Table 4.1 shows the processed fruits export of top 15 countries in the global market. The USA remained the largest exporter at global level with the exports valued at USD 15089573 thousand with a share of about 12 per cent. The Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR %) of the USA was noted 7.58 per cent. Spain is the second largest exporter of processed fruits and vegetables with the CAGR of 6.14 per cent and share of 8 per cent. Some other dominant exporting nations are namely, Mexico, Netherlands, China, and Chile, showing a CAGR nearly, 13 per cent, 11 per cent, 16 per cent and 9 per cent, respectively.

Abstract
Biotic stress in plants refers to the adverse impact of living organisms, such as pathogens, pests, and nematodes, on plant growth, development, and productivity. These biotic agents can infect, infest, or parasitize plants, triggering a range of physiological and biochemical responses that compromise plant health. Biotic stress can manifest in various forms, including fungal diseases, bacterial blights, viral infections, insect infestations, and nematode attacks, leading to reduced crop yields, lower quality produce, and significant economic losses. Understanding biotic stress is crucial for developing effective management strategies to protect plants and ensure food security, as it poses a significant threat to agricultural productivity and sustainability. To enhance the productivity of grain legumes, a critical food source for millions, mitigating biotic stress is essential. By adopting effective strategies to manage biotic stressors like diseases, pests, and nematodes, legume yields can be significantly increased.
This can be achieved through the development and deployment of resistant cultivars, integrated pest management (IPM) practices, cultural methods like crop rotation and sanitation, and biological control methods. Additionally, rhizobia and mycorrhizal inoculation can enhance plant defense and nutrient uptake, while precision agriculture techniques facilitate early detection and targeted management of biotic stress. By implementing these approaches, legume productivity can be boosted, ensuring food security, improving livelihoods, and meeting the growing demand for this vital crop.
Keywords: Biotic stress, Integrated pest management, Legume productivity, Sustainability

Biometry is the measurement of various grossly visible dimensions of organs and their application in statistical analysis to generate biological data.
Various biometrical parameters used for different organs
The biometry of different organs is conducted with the help of non-stretchable thread, Vernier callipers, measuring scale, protector, glass beaker of various sizes, calibrated measuring cylinders, etc. While conducting biometry, it should be kept in mind that the way or the procedure for conducting biometry of different organs varies due to variation in shapes of the same and their positions. Some of the biometrical parameters of different organs and bones are summarized below.
1. Length: May be used to measure the distance between the highest points along the length of any bone or organ. Usually expressed in cm. Non-stretchable thread, Vernier callipers and measuring scale are used for this purpose.
2. Breadth: May be used to measure the distance between the highest points along the breadth of any bone or organ. Usually expressed in cm. Non-stretchable thread, Vernier callipers and measuring scale are used for this purpose.
3. Thickness: May be used to measure the distance between the highest points in regard to the thickness of any bone or organ. Usually expressed in cm. Non-stretchable thread, Vernier callipers and measuring scale are used for this purpose.
4. Volume: It is measures by water displacement of any organ. Usually smaller organs are used. The fresh organ is dipped into a calibrated

Dry flowers are naturals, dried and preserved with an everlasting value the can be cherished for longer period. According to APEDA investigations, dried flowers accounted for 15% in the total floriculture export during 1988-89 and increased to 64% in 1994-95. Export value of dried plants and planting materials increased from Rs. 109.21 million in 1993-94 to Rs. 364.55 million in 1995-96.
 
India exports dry flowers to U.K., Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, U.S.A., Japan and Singapore. Dry flower production is labour intensive, provides self-employment and job opportunities for a large number of workers and aids in development of subsidiary industries. The industry has many advantages.

House plants play an integral role in providing decorative value and aesthetic sense to the place. They are important component of interiorscaping and provides softscape. House plants are also considered as natural air filters as they provide freshness and many house plants are reported to absorb many house pollutants. The demand of house plants are generating many employment opportunities like plant rental services, interiorscaping etc. The house plants are preferred in homes, offices, hospitals, multiplexes etc.

Placement

These attractive house plants rightly deserve their place as interior decorations. “Shade loving” is an adjective often used to describe house plants, but this is a misnomer, Plants may be shade tolerant but they do not actually seek poor light. Diffused light through the glasses or windows’ can be effective you can supplement the suns’ rays with artificial light in the form of a “warm white” fluorescent tube. Then may be shifting them after frequent intervals in the open for a short duration in morning hours to supplement the sunlight during winter months and leaving them out overnight and bringing them after exposing them to early morning sunlight during hot months exposure for a desired time frame in the monsoon are some of the effective methods to make your house plants feel happier.

Climate change mitigation is urgent, and adaptation to climate change is crucial, particularly in agriculture, where food security is at stake. The gases contributing to the greenhouse effect mainly include carbon dioxide (CO₂), nitrous oxide (N₂O) and methane (CH₄). These gases have varying global warming potentials, which can be expressed in CO₂ equivalents.

Agriculture, currently responsible for 2030% of global greenhouse gas emissions (counting direct and indirect agricultural emissions), can however contribute to both climate change mitigation and adaptation. The main mitigation potential lies in the capacity of agricultural soils to sequester CO₂ through building organic matter. This potential can be realized by employing sustainable agricultural practices, such as those commonly found within organic farming systems. Examples of these practices are the use of organic fertilizers and crop rotations including legume leys and cover crops. Mitigation is also achieved in organic agriculture through the avoidance of open biomass burning, and the avoidance of synthetic fertilizers, the production of which causes emissions from fossil fuel use.

Organic agriculture is associated with higher carbon sequestration as many organic practices help to improve soilquality and carbon sequestration. The most common organic practices that increase soil organic carbon are the use of organic fertilizers (such as the composted waste products from livestock husbandry), crop rotation involving legumes and the planting of cover crops.

Organic farming offers several ways to mitigate climate change when compared to conventional agriculture:

Primarily, organic farming, through its key practices of organic fertiliser use and crop rotations with forage legumes, tends to increase soil organic carbon levels resulting in carbon sequestration.This contributes to climate change mitigation, as it absorbs CO₂ from the atmosphere and stores the additional carbon in the soil. However, depending on soil type and climatic conditions, this process usually comes to a halt after some decades, when soil organic carbon levels have reached a new equilibrium and soils arethus saturated with respect to organic carboncontents. Furthermore, this storage of organiccarbon is reversible and the carbon can again be released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide when switching to unsustainable practices.

Agroforestry is a new name for a set of old practices. The general concept of agroforestry is to integrate trees and agriculture so as to create a more diversified landscape, while providing the producers with new environmental and economic benefits. In other words, agroforestry is a method of farming that allows trees and shrubs to grow along with crops and/or livestock, therefore blending agriculture and forestry in the same production system. In fact, man’s association with forest is much older than with agriculture. First man was a food gatherer and hunter in forests. Then he realized that the seeds of the fruits he collected germinated, grew into plants and bore the fruits again and thus man started to cultivate foods. Man’s desire to live in a community created settled agriculture.

The pressure on the agricultural lands has increased manifolds due to the increasing population, expansion of urban area and the industrialization process. The environment has also been disturbed. Soil is losing its productivity and the biodiversity is threatened. Farming community is trying all means to increase the land productivity. Chemical fertilizers and pesticides are applied in higher proportion, causing environmental pollution hazards. Under all these circumstances agroforestry has shown that besides sustainable agriculture it can also help promote a better environment. Trees have always played an important role in mankind’s survival. This relatively young science known as agroforestry was brought from the realm of indigenous knowledge into the forefront of agricultural research four decades ago and was promoted widely as a sustainability-enhancing practice that combines the best attributes of forestry and agriculture.

Fungi are one of the major causes of crop damage which affect crop yield, quality and revenue. Therefore to control these fungal diseases, fungicidal crop protection products are used at different stages of crop growth. Many of our current fungicides produce excellent results with respect to efficacy, crop quality, food safety, and improved cost/profit ratios of agricultural production.

Principal Scientist and I/c Head, Division of Social Sciences and Training IIHR, Hessaraghatta Lake Post, Bangalore - 560 089, Karnataka

Introduction

The word ‘risk’ derives from the early Italian risicare, which means ‘to dare’. In this sense, risk is a choice rather than a fate (Bernstein, 1996).

It is an inherent trait in humans to take chances. We believe that even though the future is uncertain we can make calculated choices based on our knowledge of past occurrences and the outcomes will be skewed in our favour. 

Introduction

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a field that mainly focuses on creating intelligent technologies that can easily perform tasks requiring human intelligence. One subfield is machine learning (ML), which enables machines to learn from data without being explicitly programmed. There are two main types of ML: supervised and unsupervised learning. Supervised learning trains machines on labeled data to predict output, while unsupervised learning trains machines on unlabeled data to find patterns. ML includes techniques such as regression, classification, clustering, and deep learning. ML has the potential to revolutionize many fields but also raises ethical, social, and legal issues. Developing trustworthy, responsible, and ethical ML systems is crucial. The MuCulloch and Pitts Model, proposed by Warren MuCulloch and Walter Pitts in 1943, is the first formal model of ML techniques. It is also known as the linear threshold gate (Fig. 1).

The Government of India has accorded ‘high priority’ status to the food processing industry. The Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MOFPI) has been set up as a nodal agency for formulation and implementation of the policies and plans for the food processing industries.

With an overall objective of positioning India as the ‘Food Basket’ to the world, several initiatives have been undertaken with the objective of promoting investments, innovation and bringing best practices. This vision is in line with the ‘Make in India’ initiative of the Government (CII, 2019).

5.1. Policy Interventions (MOFPI, 2019)

5.1.1. Infrastructure Development

Fragmented, inadequate, and inefficient infrastructure along the supply chain has been identified as one of major factor inhibiting growth of food processing sector. As adequate investment for infrastructure has not been forthcoming from private sector, government will continue to assist, participate and incentivize creation of supply chain infrastructure for food processing sector.

In provincial areas of non-industrial nations, over 70% of the populace actually relies upon agriculture . Be that as it may, financial emergencies, informal land distribution and Climate change issues have ruined endeavored gains in agricultural efficiency and related rustic improvement results. Innovation pushed advancement has generally driven farming to the brink of another improvement that can influence plant variety and yield, yet additionally climatological and financial results. The idea of economical agriculture has become progressively advocated as examination and cultivating networks accept that efficiency with natural and social outcomes should be sensibly adjusted. Agriculture of created countries has basically benefitted of this idea overall during the 1990 s. To find success around the world, broad exploration should be led not just for enormous scope farmers in created countries yet additionally for limited scope ranches in agricultural countries. Climatic smart agriculture saves biodiversity by taking on sound, multifunctional, and multi-trimming approach through plan arranged spatial preparation and stream among them. Here, a spatiotemporal information driven worldview for detecting observing and coordinating agricultural Climate has been proposed to upgrade the utilization of Climatic smart agriculture framework. As an excursion towards maintainable coordinated cultivating, computerized farming offers different open doors for universal systems administration and computerized resources through information sway. The exploration issues are basically worried in the combination of different information archives with administration information, open access information, institutional information, and space explicit information from end clients. Because of the mix of heterogeneous sensors and advanced stages in agriculture, the information typology is getting more extravagant, and how much information is continually expanding.
Feedstocks assume a significant part in the comprehensive advancement of non-industrial nations that depend vigorously on agriculture. It has been standard that farmers must be actually present on their fields during each

Morinda citrifolia L is a unique horticultural plant belonging to Rubiaceae family. It has a tremendous demand because of its high medicinal value. Increase in demand has led to commercial farming of the tree. Noni is an ideal plant for mixed farming with other horticultural plantations. There is concurrent efforts to select early bearing plants with big size and fruits.  Noni can be grown in any type of soil under adverse climatic conditions.  Crop Improvement, nutritional requirement, water requirement, pest and disease management are the research priorities in Morinda citrifolia.

Indian Noni (Morinda citrifolia) is popularly known as Indian mulberry belongs to Rubiaceae family.  It is also called great Morinda, Cheese fruit, Mouse’s Pine Apple, Nono, Jumbie bread fruit, Hog apple. Noni was one of the most widely used medicinal plants in Polynesia prior to European contact, and continues popular among modern population. Noni is commonly known as canary wood in Australia, Kura in Fijii, mora de la India in spanish, nono in Tahiti and Nin in Marshall Island. Medicinal values of Noni were known to man many centuries ago. Uses of Noni were mentioned in Indian ethnopharmacology and ayurvedic medicines. Noni is grown as medicinal plant in most of  South Indian temples as sacred plant like basil (Tulasi). In India, it is called by several names in different  regional languages like nuna, manjanathi, manjanuna in Tamil,  molugu, mogal, bundamaddi in Telugu, kakaiplam, kattapitalavam, mannanatti in Malayalam, tagatemara, haladipavete in Kannada, Ach Al in Hindi, Paphan, Achchhulca in Sanskrit, Aseti, Nagkura, Mundari solidaru in Marathi.

1.    Which of the following plastic film is not utilized for metalized flexible packaging?

(a) Polyester

(b) Low-density polyethylene

(c) Bakelite

(d) PVDC

2.    Tin-coating applied to steel base is carried out by

(a) Hot- dipping method

(b) Electrolytic deposition

(c) Cold-dipping method

(d) None of these

Introduction

Food security means access by all people at all times to enough food for an active healthy life (Reuntlinger, 1985; World bank, 1986; FAO, 1989). But now-a-days, food security is used differently at national, regional and household level. At regional and national levels, it is related to regional and national balances between availability and need whereas at household level, it is related with food production resources, income available for purchases and assistance sufficient to meet the aggregate needs of all household members.

Availability of food alone may not guarantee access due to poor distribution or lack of purchasing power as co-existence of aggregate food self sufficiency and widespread malnutrition and hunger do exist. As per Chen and Kates, 1994, food security includes combination of criteria as:

Sustainable management of soil resources is essential for food, nutritional and economic security of the country. The continued degradation of soil resources is considered an important factor in lowering the total and partial factor productivity of agriculture in the country. The process like soil erosion, nutrient loss, water logging, desertification, acidification, compaction, crusting, salinization and soil contamination affect food and environmental security in most parts of the country. The future agricultural growth at higher rate cannot be sustained with a deteriorating soil resource base. We need to monitor the quality of soil resources and devise appropriate management strategies for sustainable crop production without deteriorating the environment.

In India, several agencies like National Commission on Agriculture (NCA), Ministry of Agriculture (Soil and Water conservation Division), Society for Promotion of Waste lands Development (SPWD), NBSS&LUP, Nagpur have been constantly inventorizing and characterizing soil resource for drawing up land use and development plans at National and State levels. However, there is a great variance in estimates due to differences in approaches and criteria for assessment. For an example,the total degraded land as estimated by NCA is 148.09 Mha as against, 175.0 Mha by Ministry of Agriculture (Soil and water conservation Division), 129.58 Mha by SPWD and 187.7 Mha by NBSS&LUP, Nagpur.

In soil profile development, we focused on vertical variability in soils - the differences among soil horizons. In this chapter we focused on horizontal variability- how soils differ from place to place across the landscape. Spatial variations in soil properties occurs across distances having geographic meaning for land management-from a few meters to many kilometers. We need to monitor regularly the status of our soil resources employing modern technologies to refine our understanding about them and renew our commitment to their preservation. The applications of Remote Sensing (RS), Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) have greater opportunities to offer in this regard.

Essential oil is a concentrated hydrophobic oily fragrance liquid extracted from plants, containing easily evapourated chemical compounds at room temperature. Essential oils are extracted from the different plant parts including the flowers, leaves, stem, bark, and roots, and they are extracted from different techniques. The most preferable method of extraction is hydro distillation which is easy to use and cheap. Essential oils are used in every field of life, used in aromatherapy, and act as antifungal, antioxidant, anxiety, pain relievers, and depression.

Agricultural biodiversity is known as crop genetic resources, although agroecosystems hold a wide diversity of other organisms that contribute toward their productivity and sustainability. Amongst these pollinators play the massive role in crop pollination and thus ensure that fruit or seeds are formed. Over 3 decades ago, the international community began to emphasize on the importance of pollinators. In agro-ecosystems, pollinators are essential for agriculture, horticultural and forage production as well as the production of seed for many root and fiber crops. Pollinators such as bees, birds and bats affect 35 per cent of the world’s crop production, increasing outputs of 87 of the leading food crops worldwide, plus many plant-derived medicines in our pharmacies (Klein et al., 2007). Food security, food diversity, human nutrition and plant diversity all rely strongly on animal pollinators. Pollination is an essential ecosystem service that enables plant reproduction and food production. The pollinators’ abundance and diversity play pivotal role for enhancement of the productivity, quality and maintenance of natural resources of plant biodiversity. The diminution of pollination abundance and their diversity certainly affect productivity, quality and plant biodiversity.