eChapters

Introduction

Cultural management is defined as manipulation /or adjustment of crop production techniques for management of plant diseases. Cultural practices have been as old as possibly agriculture itself. In early stage of agriculture development, the growers through their experiences and observations had known that repeated cultivation of a particular crop species or variety on a piece of land often resulted in crop sickness. As a matter of fact, in the present day agriculture, cultural practices are being considered as essential backup methods for management of plant diseases. Adequate adjustment in crop production techniques can modify the environment in such a manner that it becomes unfavorable for the pathogen and pathogenesis. Based on this the disease control affected by cultural practices are preventive, these practices aim at reducing the activity and density of inoculum. It offer the opportunity to alter the environment, the condition of the host, behavior of the causal agent to achieve economic management of disease.

Molecular diagnostics has witnessed groundbreaking technological advances in recent times, starting from automated sample preparation to real time amplification technology. Possibility to develop and run assays for ever increasing number of clinical queries has become effortless due to the technological advances. However, the state of the art in quality assurance and quality control practices for molecular diagnostics has seldom been up to the expectations if one considers accuracy for once in a lifetime genetic tests or new genetic test targets appearing almost every single day. In the face of such issues, clinical laboratories are struggling to develop appropriate quality assurance programs for the molecular diagnostic tests they conduct. In addition, legislation and government policies threaten to increase oversight of genetic tests to a level not seen before in laboratory medicine, for example, FDA’s guidance on in vitro diagnostic multivariate index assays (IVDMIA).

To relate patient results to previous test results or to absolute values in clinical practice guidelines, those results need to be comparable across time and methods. This may either be achieved by designing the identical value across methods and test versions or by using reliable and stable conversions. Therefore, the establishment of international standards and reference materials is of paramount importance. Monitoring molecular test system outputs and statistical analysis might provide a good way to obtain such standards; however, such traditional QC (Quality Control) strategies can be slow to take root in molecular diagnostics.This chapter highlights general and specific issues relevant for quality assurance and quality control in the routine molecular diagnostics laboratory and guidelines for designing quality manuals for a molecular diagnostic laboratory.

Introduction

We use our five senses to perceive the world around us. Some senses, like touch and taste, need contact with the objects. But we get most of our information about the environment through sight and hearing, which do not need close contact with the external objects. In scientific terms, we are doing remote- sensing all the time. Remote- sensing is the process of recording/observing/ perceiving (sensing) objects or events from a distance. Remote- sensing is a way of monitoring and detecting the features, usually physical, of a specific area by measuring its reflected and emitted radiation (usually from satellite or aircraft).

Introduction

Packaging is one of the most important processes to maintain the quality of food products for storage, transportation and end-use. The basic functions of packaging are considered as protection, containment, information and convenience. Food packaging was initially considered to increase the marketable life of the food in a container by protecting it from the influence of the environmental factors. Then it was expected to be informative, easy-to handle and disposal-friendly with increased functionality. Current innovations of food packaging technology are geared to ensure one/ all of these properties along with better protection, more efficient quality preservation and enhanced safety of the packaged food. Innovative packaging technologiesalso prevent the rate of quality deterioration and facilitate easy handling of the produce during distribution and marketing. During distribution, the quality of the food product can deteriorate biologically and chemically as well as physically. Innovative packaging technologies are the most important and challenging technologies to overcome these limitations.These technologies require specific knowledge and appropriate training and understanding for rationally selecting the most suitable packaging for each product and intended use. Innovative packaging of foods includes active packaging, smart packaging, on-the-go packaging, intelligent packaging etc. which have been briefly discussed in this manuscript.

Composition is a fundamental element of cinematography, essential for creating engaging video content. When designing shots and angles, videographers must consider not only technical aspects like lighting and sound but also creative choices that set the mood. Video composition helps filmmakers craft a narrative, influencing how viewers engage with the story. Effective composition goes beyond just framing; it involves color grading and the strategic placement of elements within the frame, making it vital for captivating the audience.

Video Composition Tutorial

A tutorial from B&H Photo’s YouTube channel outlines five crucial rules of video composition that should not be broken. These rules serve as a foundation, providing structure and consistency to the creative process

ABSTRACT

In last twenty years, molecular biology has revolutionized conventional plant breeding techniques in many areas. The use of molecular markers in conventional breeding techniques has also improved the accuracy of selection and allowed breeders to produce varieties with combined traits that were difficult before the advent of DNA technology. Among vegetables, onion (Allium cepa L.) is the most important cash crop of India. Onion productivity in India is much lower (11.38 tones / ha.) compared to other countries (44.1 tones / ha. in Japan). Purple blotch disease (PBD) caused by Alternaria porri (Ellis) Ciferri decreases the yields by up to 50 percent. Genetically resistant onion varieties are the most economical, simple and eco-friendly mode of disease management. The advent of mo- lecular markers provided the opportunity to understand the genetic resistance more pre- cisely. In this paper we present our successful efforts in developing PCR based markers linked to purple blotch disease resistance, so that such markers can be easily integrated into PBD resistance breeding program in onion. Onion germplasm was screened for PBD resistance. Line PBR 287 was identified as a good source of resistance and the genetics of inheritance of resistance in this line was worked out. The protocols for isolating good quality DNA and PCR amplification conditions were standardized. 37 polymorphic mark- ers were identified between resistant and susceptible parents. Crosses were made between resistant and susceptible parents. Parents, F₂ and individual F₂ progenies were subjected for analysis of genetics of resistance and RAPD marker analysis. F₂ individuals segregated in 3:1 ratio for resistance. DNA from resistant and susceptible F₂ individuals was pooled separately for Bulked Segregant Analysis (BSA). BSA identified one RAPD marker of 900bp being linked to resistance. Further Chi-square test for detecting the deviation of segregation of this 900bp marker confirmed segregation with classical Mendalian ratio 3:1 for a monogenic trait. Identified marker is of great practical utility to the plant breeders to screen large number of populations for purple blotch disease resistance at the early stages of the crop even in absence of the pathogen.

1. TECHNIQUES OF HYBRID SEED PRODUCTION

1.1. Field crops

Table 1: Techniques of hybrid seed production in field crops

Introduction

Ducks are domesticated before 3000-4500 years. Ancestor of domestic ducks is wild mallard duck (Anas boschos) which are broody. Scientific name of domestic duck is Anas platyrhyncos. Duck farming is the part of poultry farming system. Duck can be raised for meat and eggs. In most part of the world, duck ranks next to the chicken in terms of egg and meat production. Commercial duck farming is increasing as this business has good potential to earn money through egg production. Duck can be feed on agro-industrial waste, swamp and marshy areas. These hardy birds can survive in such as areas where no other agricultural crops could be grown and other livestock raised. Duck farming business is a very profitable business as there are many duck breeds available all over the world. For commercial duck egg production and breeding, must go through water sources for raising ducks. It will reduce cost of feed. Duck can survive without water; but they need water pond kind things for fertile egg laying and mating. If pond is available then it is well and good for commercial duck farming. Chromosome number of duck is 80. Duck sound is whimpering or betch, honk. Incubation period of duck egg is 28 days. Egg weight duck is 72 gm.

Tissue culture is a technique used to culture cells, tissues, organs or whole plant under controlled environmental conditions that in vitro condition is known as plant tissue culture. Plant tissue culture exploits the totipotency nature of plant cells, ability to develop in to complete plantlet.

ABSTRACT

As we all know that emergence of internet has completely changed the way of transferring knowledge. Online videos and lectures have been adopted by the online educational community to meddle into the MOOCs massively to disperse the knowledge. No field has remained untouched from MOOCs. This is basically a study on the available MOOCs in India in Library and Information science.

Keywords: MOOCs, Massive Open Online Course, SWAYAM, Library and Information Science.

1. Introduction

Dave Cormier devised the term Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in 2008 to describe an open online course “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge” designed by Siemens and Downes. University of Manitoba offered MOOC for the first time in 2008 formally as a credit course to regular students and informally with enrolment open to anybody in the world free of cost. Since then, there is proliferation of MOOCs worldwide.

Gametogenesis

Male Gametogenesis: Male gametogenesis is the formation of male gametes and it occurs in the anthers. The end products of meiosis in higher plants are four microspores. Two mitotic divisions occur in microspores. The first division produces a tube nucleus and a generative nucleus. The second mitotic division occurs only in the generative nucleus resulting into production of two sperm cells (Fig. 3.1). The microspore is haploid (n) and develops into pollen grain in the anther, and the pollen grain further develops into a pollen tube on the stigma and in the style. The pollen tube, when it reaches the embryo sac is the fully developed male gametophyte and is trinucleate, two sperm cells and one tube nucleus.

Introduction

Spectral signature: A spectral signature is the unique pattern of reflection and emission of a target at different wavelengths. This difference helps to classify remote sensing images based on the spectral signatures of different objects.

Electromagnetic (EM) spectrum: The EM spectrum is the range of all types of EM radiation. Some examples are visible light from a lamp, radio waves from a radio station, microwaves, infrared light, ultraviolet light, X-rays, and gamma rays.

Spectral response patterns: A spectral response pattern is the amount of energy that an object reflects or emits at different wavelengths. It shows how the object interacts with the EM radiation.

Introduction

The term ‘Fish Marketing’ is composed of two broad meaning term ‘Fish’ and ‘Marketing’. Before discussing the methodological issues of fish marketing data analysis, we must understand the broader meaning of it as both words are being used frequently with a précised meaning. Google dictionary explains fish as ‘A limbless cold-blooded vertebrate animal with gills and fins living wholly in water’. But ‘fish’ as a component of fish marketing or social science study, means a product and a variety of product, which has different time, space and form utilities for consumers.

The word ‘marketing’ is not merely buying and selling of fish, rather it connotes a series of activities involved in moving goods or services from point of production to the point of consumption. So ‘fish marketing’ is defined as physical and institutional set up to perform all activities involved in the flow of fish, fish products and services from the point of initial fish production until they are in the hands of ultimate customers.

It includes assembling, handling, storage, transport, processing, wholesaling, retailing and export of fish and fishery products as well as accompanying supporting services such as market information, establishment of grades and standards, community trade, financing and price risk management and the institutions involved in performing the above functions.

It is desired to have an efficient and well planned distribution networkso that fish and fishery products move from the place of landing or production to the place of consumption at cheapest cost with quality –intact, ensuring the maximum price realization to the farmers or fish producers. It is really challenging to the public agencies involved to meet the requirements of all three major players, viz., fishermen or fish farmers, consumers and traders.

It includes all activities involved in creation of time, place, form and possession utility. Philip Kotler explained marketing as the science and art of exploring, creating, and delivering value to satisfy the needs of a target market at a profit. ‘Fish marketing’ is different from marketing of other goods and services and even differs a bit from marketing of variousagricultural goods and services.

ABSTRACT

The investigation aimed at to examine the diversity among nineteen wild and cultivated germplasms of the genus Vigna namely, V. trichuriensis, V. hainiana, V. radiata, V. aconitifolia, V. minima, V. sinensis, V. radiata var. sublobata, V. radiata var.setulosa, V. umbellata, and allopolyploid of BR3x T9 at DNA level follwing Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) technique. Ten random decamer primers were used in amplification reactions, five of that were reproducible and clear. The five primers constituted 55 bands of, which 9 are polymorphic. The similarity index based on 0 and 1 matrix of banding was calculated and dendrogram following UPGMA was constructed. The germplasms formed altogether 4 clusters on the basis of 0.375 linkage distance. The first and second cluster consisted of single genotype of V. hainiana. and V. minima respectively. The third cluster comprised wild and cultivated types of V. sinensis. The 4th cluster on the otherhand, consisted of genotypes belonging to V. radiata, V. radiata var. sublobata, V. mungo, V. radiata var. setulosa, V. trichuriensis and allopolyploid of BR3 and T9. The wild forms of different species were found to exist in the same cluster as their cultivated form. The three mungbean genotypes namely B105 (V. radiata), B1 (V. radiata) and BR3 (V. radiata )are crossable within themselves and they belonged to the cluster -IV.The intercluster cross between different clusters would like to generate new genotypes with wide variability. Based on limited range of accessions tasted in the present investigation, the approach holds promise for the classification of Vigna germplasm, identification of Vigna and marker assisted breeding in Vigna.

Introduction

There is an ongoing debate on global warming worldwide as it is seriously impacting climate change. The global temperature has been increased by 0.74±0.18°C during the last century and the climate model projections summarized in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report indicate that the global surface temperature will probably rise a further 1.1 to 6.4°C during the twenty-first century (IPCC, 2007). High ambient temperature is one of the most important stressors to poultry, which has a direct relationship on profitability of chicken meat and egg production. A seasonal problem in many parts of the world, high environmental temperature (35-43^oC in tropical countries) causes economic losses through reducing feed intake while decreasing nutrient utilization, live weight gain, egg production, egg quality and feed efficiency in poultry (Corzo et al., 2003; Panda et al., 2007a; 2008). The ideal temperature for broilers is 10-22^oC for optimum body weight and 15-27^oC for feed efficiency (NRC, 1994). Layers will produce egg constantly in the temperature range of 10-30^oC. Above 30^oC, performance in terms of growth and egg production declines.

ABSTRACT

There is a tremendous growth in the open educational resources in the recent past and large number of universities and academic organisations are making their resources freely available over the internet which has become a significant source of open educational content. Open education movement are built on the belief that anyone can use, access, reuse and redistribute these educational resources without any constraints. These Open education movements are helping educational community worldwide in making education more accessible and in making it more effective. In this chapter effort has been made to provide an overview of the history and emergence of open educational resources’ movement. This chapter also explains the various characteristics and sources of open educational resources. This chapter will help the libraries and librarians to know about open educational resources initiatives and to incorporate them in their libraries for effective resource delivery and disseminations.

Keywords: ICT, OER, Open educational resources, Digital resources, Digital repositories.

Introduction

Soils are formed by weathering of rocks and minerals and all soils contain some amount of soluble salts. Many of these act as a source of essential nutrients for the healthy growth of plants. However, when quantity and quality of salts in the soil near rhizosphere exceeds a particular value, growth, yield and/or quality of most crops is adversely affected. Such a soil is called salt-affected. The degree of adverse effects depends upon the type and quantity of salts, crop and its variety, stage of growth, cultural practices and environmental factors viz. temperature, relative humidity, and rainfall etc. Development of salinity and waterlogging is a serious problem in arid and semi-arid regions of the world and threatening the sustainability of irrigated agriculture.

Soil degradation resulting from salinity and sodicity is a major environmental threat to soil fertility and agricultural productivity in arid and semiarid regions of the world. Saline–sodic soils are degraded due to the simultaneous effect of salinity and sodicity. This causes loss of soil physical structure by clay swelling, and dispersion because of high Na+ concentrations in the soil solution or at the exchange phase. Apart from these physicochemical effects, this leads to biological properties, such as microbial respiration and biomass, becoming worse. On the other hand, salinity affects plant growth by creating osmotic imbalances and specific ion toxicities, which pose limitations to morphological, histological, chemical, biochemical, and metabolic processes. In turn, these reduce stomatal opening and photosynthetic rate, leading to decreased plant growth, crop yield, and quality.

A linear programming problem aims to maximize or minimize a linear function subject to the linear constraints. But in many cases, the objective function may not be linear or all/some of the constraints may not be linear or both the objective and the constraints may not be linear. Such an optimization problem is called a nonlinear programming problem (NLPP). In this chapter, we discuss about NLPP’s. Nonlinear programming is the process of solving an optimization problemdefined by a system of equalities and inequalities, collectively termed constraints, over a set of unknown real variables, along with an objective function to be maximized or minimized, where some of the constraints or the objective function are nonlinear. It is the sub-field of mathematical optimization that deals with problems that are not linear. A typical non-convex problem is that of optimizing transportation costs by selection from a set of transportation methods, one or more of which exhibit economies of scale, with various connectivity and capacity constraints. An example would be petroleum product transport given a selection or combination of pipeline, rail tanker, road tanker, river barge. Owing to economic batch size the cost functions may have discontinuities in addition to smooth changes. In experimental science, some simple data analysis (such as fitting a spectrum with a sum of peaks of known location and shape but unknown magnitude) can be done with linear methods, but in general these problems, also, are nonlinear.

In Doppler imaging, the reflections are from circulatory vessels, while in 2D ultrasonic image the reflection is from a tissue(s) or organ(s) In 2D ultrasound strength of reflection in B-mode depends upon density of the organ.On other hand the reflection in Doppler imaging depends upon direction of the circulation. If circulaltion is coming towards transducer, the signal will be strong, while it looses its strength while flowing away from the transducer. As shown in the diagram, the position of transducer on curved surface decides the strength or amplitude of signal. If it is positioned on curve end from where circulation is coming, the signal will be of higher amplitude, but when position is changed to other end of curved surface, where circulation is going down the amplitude of signal will decrease accordingly and is shown in reverse direction.

Principle of Doppler

Movement of blood in vessels is detected, which is depicted by color in some ultrasound machines. The flow coming towards transducer is shown above baseline, while flow going down i.e. away from transducer is shown below baseline. If position of transducer is changed from where the arterial flow is going away from transducer then, the arterial flow will be shown below baseline and venous flow that is coming towards transducer will be shown above baseline. Some machine shows red and blue color of the flow. The red color shows flow coming towards and blue color shows flow going away from transcer. A beginner ultrasonographer may think that the red color is from artery and blue is from vein. This is not true, this shows direction of flow. Since ultrasonic image of flow in Doppler is formed from series of pulses returning from vessels, the magnitude of pulse changes with variation in flow. A stationary flow will not show any height of magnitude.

Abstract

Indigenous chickens play vital role in sustainable rural development by providing livelihood and nutritional security to the rural and tribal people. However, indigenous chickens in the country increasingly face the threat of their replacement or erosion in their genetic diversity due to introduction of exotic or improved chickens to enhance productivity of backyard poultry production. Therefore, it becomes imperative to improve the growth and productivity of indigenous chickens in order to make the rearing of indigenous chickens economically attractive proposition. Aseel is one of the important indigenous breeds of chicken that is being conserved and improved for growth and egg production at Directorate of Poultry Research (DPR), Hyderabad. The averageegg production of improved Aseel chickens recorded in a laying cycle of 72 weeks of age was 150.3±5.63with an average egg weight of 48.66 ±0.34g. The average body weights of male and female birds recorded at 72 weeks of age were 3156 ± 27.4 and 2133±36.1 g, respectively while corresponding shank lengths were 135.23±0.7 and 104.9±0.4 mm. Another indigenous chicken germplasm, Ghagus-ecotype was collected from border area of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh at Kolar district and is being characterized and conserved at DPR. The comparative growth performance of these indigenous chickens was also studied under similar management conditions. It was observed that the growth and egg production of improved Aseel breed was significantly higher than the Ghagus-ecotype chickens. The improved Aseel breed with its better growth and production performance appears to be a promising indigenous chicken for sustainable rural poultry production.