eChapters

Vaccines
    
Veterinary v/s Human Vaccines
    
Modern Veterinary Vaccines
    
rDNA Technology to Prepare Vaccines
    
Veterinary Viral Vaccines
    
Live Vaccines
    
Killed Vaccines
    
Genetically Engineered Viral Vaccines
    
Veterinary Bacterial Diseases Vaccines
    
Veterinary Parasitic Vaccines
    
Vaccines against cancer
    
Swine Flu
    
Foot and Mouth Disease
    
Adenovirus Vector Vaccine
    
Johne’s Disease
    
Diseases of Poultry
    
Newcastle Disease in Poultry
    
Avian Influenza (Bird Flu)
    
Rabies
    
Disease Diagnostics
    
The Nucleic Acid-hybridization Technique
    
Diagnostics Based on pcr
    
Diagnosis by Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphisms and Related DNA-based Approaches
    
Diagnosis by DNA Probes and DNA Microarray Technology
    
Antigen-Capture Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) Proteomics
    
Disease Diagnosis Kits Developed
    
Brucelosis
    
Rabies
    
Canine Distemper and Canine Parvo Virus
    
Canine Hepatitis Virus
    
Foot and Mouth Disease
    
New Castle Disease
    
Egg Drop Syndrome Virus-76 (EDS-76)
    
Proteomics for Disease Diagnostics
    
Nanotechnologies in Diagnosis and Vaccine Development
    
Monoclonal Antibodies
    
Immunotherapy
    
Problems
    
Animal Genomics for Disease Resistance
    
Gene Knockout Technology
    
Gene Pharming
    
Gene Therapy
    
Types of Gene Therapy
    
Germ Line Gene Therapy
    
Somatic Gene Therapy

Introduction

Climate is one of the main determinants of agricultural production. Throughout the world there is significant concern about the effects of climate change and its variability on agricultural production. Researchers and administrators are concerned with the potential damages and benefits that may arise in future from climate change impacts on agriculture, since these will affect domestic and international policies, trading pattern, resource use and food security. The climate change is any change in climate over time that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods (IPCC, 2007).

Introduction

In order to define climate it is important to distinguish it from weather. The weather that we experience on a day-to-day basis is a momentary atmospheric state characterized by temperature, precipitation, wind, and so on, and seems to vary in an irregular way, not following any particular pattern. Climate is a very general term that has a variety of closely related meanings. Usually, climate refers to the average weather conditions observed over a long period of time for a given area. In contrast to the instantaneous conditions described by weather, the timescale upon which climate statistics are calculated is typically thirty years. There can be variations in climate from year to year, or one decade to another, one century to another, or any longer time scale. The climate of a region depends on many factors including the amount of sunlight it receives, its height above sea level, the shape of the land, distance from the equator and how close it is to oceans. Generally speaking, the climate remains stable over long periods of time if the various elements within the system remain stable. However, if one or more of the components of the system is altered, the stability of the whole system is compromised and can lead to uncharacteristic behaviour and give rise to weather, which is outside the usual range of expectations. This situation can be described as climate change.

Introduction

Natural phenomena such as solar radiation, volcanic activity and ocean circulation influence climate and contribute to its variability. Evidence suggests that climate is now also changing as a result of human activities, such as the emission of greenhouse gases and changing land uses. The fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) concluded that the global average mean temperature and the frequency of hot extremes, heat waves, and heavy precipitation will very likely increase in response to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Society will have to make decisions in the coming years about how to adapt to a changing climate. Climate variability and climate change create risks to all sectors of the economy. Climate is already a prime factor in 9 out of 10 disasters, many of which cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives. Effective preparation for the possible effects of climate change requires the engagement of resource managers, planners, public works officials, local managers, community development specialists, businesses, residents, and property owners. The challenge is to provide these diverse stakeholders with trusted, useful, science-based information so that they in turn can make informed decisions. 

Introduction

Development, refinement and adoption of machinery for a range of soil and cropping situations will be fundamental in any success to promote conservation agriculture systems. This chapter reports on the performance of machinery for minimum/zero tillage, bed cultivation system and crop residues management in different cropping system and outlines the need for continuing efforts. Particularly, the focus will be on developing equipments/implements for fixed path / controlled traffic to minimize the ill effects of wheels in the longer terms.

Introduction

The wide range of agro-climatic and agro-ecological situations that prevail in the country supports cultivation of a variety of horticultural crops. The horticultural sector in the country is experiencing a phenomenal growth as far as increase in area, production and productivity are concerned. However, there is a lot of opportunities for enhancing productivity, post- harvest processing, value addition, hi-tech horticulture and precision farming etc. Hence, it will be enterprising to develop this sector, especially among the marginal and small farmers, so that that it will help them doubling their income from farm sector. 

Abstract 

The district Murshidabad lies within the Younger Deltaic Plain and the Bhagirathi Recent Surface has been considered as the severe flood affected district of West Bengal state, India. Murshidabad is highlighted one in terms of occurrence of flood due to its typical geographic location and diverse geomorphological characteristics. The district witnessed frequent floods because of high intensity of rain fall in the basin area of Bhairavi-Jalangi-sealmari rivers. Inflow of flood water from Ganga-Padma in high spate condition further aggravates the congestion of drainage. Lack of proper drainage is also responsible for flood in the upstream side in the western part as well as beyond the Berhampur town. Flood management may be undertaken through physical and socio-economic measures, which includes the scientific control of reservoirs; construction of new barrages, improvement of river channels, removal of human encroachment along river side, timely flood warning and forecasting, preparedness of essential services along with proper flood plain planning are indispensable. Addressing of socio-economic problems may help to combat the flood situation in an effective way.

Abstract

Organic farming is a method of crop and livestock production that involves much more than choosing not to use pesticides, fertilizers, genetically modified organisms, antibiotics and growth hormones. Organic fruit production essentially excludes the use of many inputs associated with modern farming, most notably synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. Organic agriculture, the innovative farming system can build-on and enhance the traditional knowledge and practices of local and indigenous communities. Indigenous Knowledge can be broadly defined as the knowledge that anindigenous (local) community accumulates over generations of living in a particular environment. ITK in fruit production is important for reducing the cost of cultivation, reducing the pollution and also the natural resource base. It is very important to understand these age old practices to address the local problems and to document it before is vanished away.

Introduction

ICT is an acronym for Information and Communication Technology.  The information refers to accessibility of digital data in an easy way to retrieve relevant facts. The communication refers to the medium or the way to transmit the information from one place to another place or one media to another media. The advancement in these areas refers to technology. The collectively ICT covers any product that will store, retrieve, manipulate, transmit or receive information electronically in a digital form. For example, personal computers, digital television, email, robots.

Climate change may refer to a change in average weather conditions, or in the time variation of weather around longer-term average conditions (i.e., more or fewer extreme weather events). The change lasts for an extended period of time i.e., decades to millions of years has also been considered as climate change. The causing factors of climate change are biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received by Earth, plate tectonics, and volcanic eruptions. The affecting factors seems to be irreversible, it has become the today’s necessity to develop improved next generation technologies which processes the current and future shifts in the climate system. In particular, the Agriculture will be most affected domain due to climate over the next few decades (Brown and Funk, 2008). The development of crop modeling tools pointed out that climate change is likely to decrease agricultural production.

Abstract

More than 73% of its total population lives in rural areas and depends primarily on agriculture for livelihood. The performance of agriculture determines food and nutrition security which is important for reducing poverty and achieving sustainable growth. Production and productivity has increased manifold and yields of major crops like paddy, pulses, oilseeds and vegetables have more than trebled in the last four decades. The impressive long term growth in agriculture helped in taking the state out of famines and serious food shortages into one of the food surplus states and ensuring food, nutrition and livelihood security. The state is characterized by wide diversity and considerable spatio-temporal variations in growth and productivity. In fact, agriculture isincreasing with public investment in infrastructure including irrigation, establishing appropriate farming systems, developing suitable and affordable technologies and crop varieties, augmenting credit delivery and designing region and crop-specific plans. In this backdrop, a study was conducted to document the indigenous and organic farming technologies in selected communities of the state in tribal dominant Gajapati district of Odisha intended to help the farmers to be aware of their own innovative technologies for weakening balances on the environment due to intensive use of fertilizers and agrochemicals. 

Introduction
Climate change has become an issue of global concern and has a direct large scale impact on land and marine biosphere. The expected and unlikely events like increase in temperature, melting of glaciers and rising of sea level, increase in magnitude  and frequency of drought and floods, cyclones/tsunamis, desertification, heat and cold waves, snow fall are most threatening challenges that are being witnesses in the present era. Rain fall is likely to decline by 5-10 % over southern parts of India where as 10-20% increase likely over the other regions. There is probable decrease in number of rainy days over major parts of the country pointing at likely increase of extreme events of floods or drought. In India, salt affected soils currently estimated to be 6.73 M ha in different agroecological regions and  the area is likely to be almost turn to 20Mha by 2050. Framing breeding strategies to develop climate resilient varieties is necessary to mitigate adverse effects of climate change.

In our country livestock are mostly dependent upon cereal by-products or the crop residues such as straws, stovers etc., which are low in nutritive value. According to the National Commission on Agriculture (1989-90), there is a shortage of 40% of concentrates, 20% of dry fodder and 40% of green fodder for meeting the nutritional requirements of livestock. Consequently the livestock is surviving on low weight, low energy and thereby leading to problems in the production and reproduction. Nutritional deficiencies as well as imbalances are implicated as the cause of infertility in animals. The clinical signs observed with the deficiency of a specific nutrient as variable depending on the degree of the deficiency. The information on the important relationship between nutrition and health is necessary for recognizing and correlating the reproductive problems.

Introduction

Agroforestry system (AFS) is a form of sustainable land use that combines trees, shrubs, crops and livestock so as to increase and diversify farm and forest production along with conserving natural resources. Microorganisms play a crucial role in improving nutrient availability to plants, thereby decreasing the dependence on chemical fertilizers and achieve sustainable agriculture through agroforestry (Araujo et al. 2012). Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), and the association of rhizobia with leguminous plants are symbiotic associations of high economic importance for increasing agricultural production. Yadav et al. (2010) studied soil biological properties under different tree based traditional agroforestry systems in a semi-arid region of Rajasthan, India and concluded that biological properties can be optimized in the soil under AFS. Many authors have reported that soil microbial biomass and microbial diversity are greater in the AFS due to the ameliorative effects of trees and organic matter inputs and the differences in litter quality and quantity and root exudates (Mungai et al. 2005; Sørensen and Sessitsch, 2007). Also, the presence of a large and diverse soil microbial community is crucial to the productivity of any agroecosystem. Moreover, more than one plant species in AFS have been reported to have shown a larger diversity and/or abundance of mycorrhizal fungi than monocultures (Cardoso and Kuyper 2006) and more efficiency in biological fixation of the nitrogen, especially in tropical soils (Freitas et al. 2010). Also, soil microbial biomass has other important functions in the soil such as nutrient cycling and the degradation of pollutants (Watanabe and Hamamura 2003; Araújo and Monteiro 2006).

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) defines Climate Change as a change the weather parameters attributed directly or indirectly to human activity, altering the composition of the global atmosphere. Human activity includes the pollution that arises from industrial activity and other sources that produce greenhouse gases. These gases, such as carbon dioxide, have the ability to absorb the spectrum of infrared light and contribute to the warming of our atmosphere. Once produced, these gases can remain trapped in the atmosphere for tens or hundreds of years.

Introduction

Livestock sector plays an important role in the rural economy at national level and this sector is emerging as a driving force in agriculture by contributing towards the income and employment of rural households. Livestock contributed 16% to the income of small farm households that indicates importance of livestock sector as a whole. In 2010-11, livestock generated outputs worth Rs 2075 billion (at 2004-05 prices). Agriculture sector grew at low rate of 4.7% during 2013-14 and contributed 13.9% to National GDP (Economic Survey 2013-14). The livestock sector contributed over 4.1 per cent of the total GDP in 2012-13, that nearly accounts for 29.5% of the agricultural GDP (Economic Survey 2013-14) indicating a significant contribution of the livestock. Sheep and goats are an important livestock species for a large number of rural poor, especially socially backward, marginal and landless labourers in India. Sheep are mostly reared for wool and meat purpose. India ranks third in sheep population and account for nearly 6% of world sheep population, currently India has 65.06 million sheep as per Livestock census 2012.

Introduction

Dry lands cover nearly one-third of the earth’s total surface and characterized by high climatic variability in rainfall and temperature along with higher potential of wind and water erosion (Mainguet, 1991; Okin, 2000). Wind erosion has been identified as one of the overriding factors of desertification in regions characterized by strong and persistent winds through out an annual dry season (Le Houerou, 1996). Clear sweep of strong winds across sandy desert is the great hindrance in sustenance and progress of agricultural activities. The strong blowing winds on one hands takes away top fertile soil thus causing irreparable loss to soil productivity, on the other hand deposition of airborne soil particles (sand, silt and clay) block the roads, railways, water bodies, open canals and burry agricultural fields (Gupta and Aggrawal,1978; Prasad et al, 2004). To minimize erosion hazards of speedy winds and optimize production of agricultural crops, various efforts have been made in the past by adopting different soil conservation measures among which the windbreak/ shelterbelt plantations rank high due to their expected effects on wind velocity, microclimate and productivity. 

Introduction

Any kind of garden established on the roof top of building is known as roof garden, which provides the opportunity to cultivate the quality vegetables, fruits and flowers in home. In this system plants and grasses are grown on a nutrition medium placed above a waterproof membrane. Roof gardening is mostly adopted in urban areas. It uses for decorative benefit, roof plantings make available food, manage temperature, hydrological remuneration, architectural improvement, habitats  for wildlife, frivolous opportunities, and in large scale it may even have ecological benefits (Louise, 2009). This considerably increases human health as adding organic cultivation.

Introduction

Controlled perpetuation of plants is known as plant propagation. Plant propagation can be broadly classified in two types: sexual and asexual. In sexual propagation, the fusion of male and female gametes gives rise to a new plant, whereas in asexual propagation which is also known as vegetative propagation, the development of new plants takes place without the fusion of male and female gametes, that is, the new plant develops from vegetative plant parts. Various techniques of asexual propagation are adopted in plant propagation, such as: grafting, budding, layering, cutting, etc. So far cutting and layering are concerned; the new plants are developed on their own root system, but in grafting and budding on the others’ root system. It means that in these two techniques (grafting and budding), two plant parts are joined to form new plants; the one which forms the root system is known as rootstock and the one forming the shoot system is known as scion. Plant propagation is both a science and an art. The science of plant propagation requires knowledge of plant physiology, nursery cultural practices, and characteristics of the particular plant that you want to grow. The art of plant propagation cannot be taught in a book or classroom, however, because it consists of specific technical skills that must be acquired through innate ability or experience and often requires a certain feel.

Abstract

The utilization pattern of common property water resources revealed interesting pictures in different agro climatic regions of the eastern region. The group activities for utilization of water resources in Keonjhar district of Orissa indicate that the 10 different groups of farmers have been benefited differently from the utilization of common property water resources. The group nearer to sources utilized water resources intensely to their maximum benefit. The study reveals the different benefit level for different user groups under WTCER developed water resource. It is revealed that the use of CPR revealed a highest benefit cost ratio of 3.88 against lowest benefit cost of 1.24 for different groups. A case study of use of CPR water resources under irrigation tanks for different economic activities carried out by WTCER in Ganjam, Gajapati of Orissa and South 24 Praganas of West Bengal reveals that, the relatively poor HH (having land holding <1 ha) constituting about 76% of the population under the command of the sources completely depended on the system for livelihoods and for agricultural purpose in comparison to 54% of the households having land holding more than 1 ha. In most of the systems of irrigation tanks, the dependency on common property tanks for livestock rearing was found out to be more than 90% which sometimes goes as high as 100% for poor households.

Several cryogenic agents have been used in many countries for freezing and preservation of bovine semen like solid carbon-di-oxide (-79°C), liquid air (-183°C), liquid helium (-268°C) and liquid nitrogen (-196°C).  Liquid nitrogen is 4th coldest substance known and its small amount is converted into a very large amount (near about 700 times) of its volume when exposed to atmosphere.  It is a colourless, odourless, non-irritant, non-toxic, non-caustic, non-corrosive, non-inflammatory and inert gas having boiling point -196°C temperature.  Being a liquid it comes into good contact with the surface of the semen straws and constant storage temperature is maintained throughout the straw and due to these properties LN2 is most widely used refrigerant in the world.