eChapters

ABSTRACT

Atotal of 45 Gram positive, spore forming and rod shaped bacteria identified as Bacillus species were isolated from the rhizosphere of Chickpea plants. They were studied for their interaction with root borne fungal pathogens was studied using spot test method. Isolates CBS 29, CBS 113, CBS 123, CBS 132, CBS 153 and CBS 155 inhibited the growth of four or more fungi with inhibition zones varied from 1-5 mm. Two isolates CBS 153 and CBS 155 produced siderophores on CAS supplemented agar medium. Further inoculation of these Bacilli on seeds of Chickpea cultivar C235 and H8618 showed inhibitory, stunting or stimulatory effects on plumule and radicle growth depending upon cultivar, bacterium used and stage of seedling growth. Studies on co-inoculation of these isolates with Mesorhizobium and their plant growth promoting activity are being carried out. These co-inoculation studies are important areas of exploitation to improve crop productivity.

Soil microorganisms are the most important agents in the cycling or transformation of various elements (N, P, K, S, Fe etc.) in the biosphere; where the essential elements undergo cyclic alterations between the inorganic state as free elements in nature and the combined state in living organisms. Life on earth is dependent on the cycling of nutrient elements from their elemental states to inorganic compounds to organic compounds and back into their elemental states.

The microbes through the process of biochemical reactions convert / breakdown complex organic compounds into simple inorganic compounds and finally into their constituent elements. This process is known as “Mineralization”.

Mineralization of organic carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and iron by soil microorganisms makes these elements available for reuse by plants. In the following paragraphs the cycling or transformations of some of the important elements are discussed.

INTRODUCTION

During the last three decades, libraries have shown a considerable degree of momentum in the collection building and readership programme activities involving considerable expenditure of funds. This rapid development of libraries as a consequence, generated several evaluative studies on the usefulness of libraries to society. Until recently evaluations were subjective, based purely on opinions expressed by an individual or group. However, developments in the field of mathematics, statistics, operations research, management science, economics and system analysis have led to a minimization of this subjectivity. In particular, the systems analysis approach has led to the identification and application of appropriate quantitative measuring techniques for evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of the information services offered by the librarians. This has generated a new field in library and information science viz; ‘Bibliometrics’.

Bibliometric analysis which has now become a well established part of information research and quantitative approach to the description of documents and examination of services is gaining ground both in research and practice. Librarians are facing the problems arising out of ever increasing cost of different types of reading materials and decreasing budgets of libraries.

Bibliometric studies are helpful in solving the problems of librarians. Pritichard¹ defines Bibliometrics as “application of mathematical and statistical methods to books and other media of communication”.

Zantedeschia aethiopica (L.) Spreng. (syn. Calla aethiopica L.) (Araceae): Eng.- Arum Lily; Hindi – Iram sousan [NI]. A rhizomatous perennial, suitably planted in moist and shaddy situations and under green house conditions.

Asparagus is an herbaceous perennial that is widely grown in the United States, Germany, Spain, and France, with India contributing only a little amount. For many years, asparagus has been grown. This was a favourite crop of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. It belongs to the Liliaceae family and is thought to have originated in the eastern Mediterranean and further east in the Caucasus Mountains. It’s a monocotyledonous perennial that’s farmed for its edible stems (spears).

Organic farming is getting more and more popular as a farm practice. Although most agricultural land is still processed through conventional farming, the demand for organic agriculture and organic crops is constantly increasing. Organic farming is defined in a variety of ways. The majority of them argue that synthetically manufactured fertilisers and pesticides are not allowed in organic farming. This is right; yet, organic farming encompasses much more. Organic farming is founded on unique qualities as a wholly natural and sustainable farm management technique. To put it another way, organic farming is both an agricultural practise and a philosophy of cooperating with nature.

Introdcution

Poultry have a nervous system made up of the brain, spinal cord, sympathetic nerves that govern their viscera, and branches that go to their ears and eyes. The structure of the brain and spinal cord is very similar to that of mammals. However, there are also significant structural variations between many bird brains and many human brains, including the following:

1. Absence of cortex: According to Cobb (1960), the cortex is “a peripherally placed coating (pallium) of cells arranged in layers,” yet it is completely absent in birds. However, other authors have compared the hyperstriatum to the mammalian cortex (Haefelfinger, 1957; Stingelin, 1958).

2. Presence of hyperstriatum: The functions of the hyperstriatum are comparable to those of the mammalian cortex. In pigeons and chickens, the hyperstriatum may be involved in the visual and hearing systems’ functions.

3. Birds have highly developed optic lobes.

4. Turkeys and vultures are the only birds with a well-developed olfactory system.

The Indian arid and semi-arid regions are characterized by immature, structure less, coarse textured soils with low water holding capacity and poor nutrient status. The moisture deficit conditions dominate for a long time throughout the year, which acts as the major limiting factor for establishment and growth of woody plant. Due to harsh edapho-climatic conditions, arable crop production is risky in arid and semi arid regions and threatening the agriculture, under such situation, horticulture based cropping system is considered effective strategy for improving productivity, employment oppornitues and nutritional security. Most of the cropping systems operating in the limited irrigated    area of arid ecosystems have very high water requirement and are highly unsustainable, hence location specific models have to be developed involving fruit crops, multipurpose tree species and arable crops in an agri-silvi-horti production system for increasing irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE), productivity, profitability and sustainability of the system. An attempt has been made to present the status of available research data on some of horticulture based farming systems for arid and semi arid regions

ABSTRACT

Assessment of technical and financial feasibility of two resource conservation technologies suitable for rice establishment1. Zero Tillage Machine (ZTM) for direct seeded rice (DSR) and; 2. Paddy transplanter machine (PTM) for mechanical transplanted rice(MTR) in Rohtas district was carried out at the demonstration farm of Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), Rohtas during Kharif-2012 and 2013 in a view to reduce the drudgery and cost of cultivation. An eight row self-propelled PTM (Model 2ZT-238-8) and 9 tined National Make ZTM were used for the purpose. Technical performance of these resource conservation technologies was found satisfactory. The field capacity, field efficiency, fuel consumption and cost of establishment of rice by these technologies were evaluated for the purpose. For the assessment of financial feasibility; benefit-cost ratio, internal rate of return, pay-back period and net present worth of these technologies were evaluated and demonstrated to rural youths for their quick adoption and get rid of labour-shortage and delayed transplanting of rice crop and hence saving of significant loss of Rabi crops that happens due to delayed harvesting of rice crop.

Irrigation/ Drip/ Fertigation

Pomegranate is considered to be drought hardy fruit crop. Supplemental irrigation, however, is necessary for realizing higher fruit yield and better quality. Irrigation is also used to regulate cropping in pomegranate and the total water applied therefore depends on the desired bahar. In Gujarat and Maharashtra, where Ambe bahar is taken, regular irrigation is required during March to July and irrigation is stopped after the fruit harvest until January. For Mrig bahar crop irrigation is not required from July to September. However, in case of prolonged break in monsoon one or two supplementary irrigation at an interval of 10-15 days during October to December are required. In hasta bahar (September flowering) prolonged rainy season helps in reducing requirement for irrigation 3-4 irrigation at monthly interval after cessation of rainfall are must to obtain good fruit size and higher yield.

The phenomenon and behavior of supercritical fluid (SCF) has been the subject of research right from 1800's and suggestion of supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) came in to exixtence in 1958. Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) was first developed in 1960, and that time, it was considered as a science fiction chromatography and a revolutionary separation technique. But its reputation has slowly ebbed over the years and it is now moving forward by leaps and bounds as a stable analytical method with many advantages over the existing chromatographic methods. It is an unit operation that exploits the high dissolving power of fluids at temperature and pressurre above their critical values for extracting analytes from sample matrices.The first commercial packed column of SFC was made available in 1981 and the first commercial capillary column SFC instrument was introduced in 1985. Several refrences are useful for understanding the super critical fluid extraction and super critical fluid chromatography

Conservation Agriculture Conservation agriculture is an approach to managing agro-ecosystems, for improved and sustained productivity, increased profits and food security while preserving and enhancing the resource base and the environment. It is a set of technologies, including minimum disturbance, permanent soil cover, diversified crop rotations, and integrated weed management (Reicosky and Saxena, 2007; Hobbs et al., 2008, Friedrich et al., 2012).

Introduction

The agricultural sector in India has focussed more on agricultural output and food security. From the year 1965 to 2016, India’s food production was multiplied by 3.7 times while the population was multiplied by 2.55 times. More than one f ifth of rural households with self-employment in agriculture as their principal occupation were having income less than the poverty line (NSSO, 2011-12). In the early 1980s, the farm income per cultivator was 34 per cent of the income of non agricultural workers. In the year 1993-1994, the relative income of farmers was one-fourth of the income of the non-agricultural workers. According to SAS 2012 2013, the average annual income of farm households from the farm as well as non farm sources was Rs. 77,112 which is 60 per cent from farm activities and 40 per cent from non-farm activities. In April 2016, the Government constituted an Inter Ministerial Committee to examine issues relating to DFI and recommend strategies to achieve the same. The target was to change the farm to non-farm income ratio from the existing 60:40 in 2015-16 to 70:30 by 2022-23. A seven-point strategy was proposed and several initiatives were taken to increase the income of farmers. The last available estimates on the income of agricultural households are based on the Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) during 77th round (January – December 2019). As per the survey results, the average monthly income per agricultural household from all sources was estimated to be. Rs. 10218. Thus, the present study was taken to know the awareness, knowledge and perception of farmers towards doubling farmers income. Understanding the farmers awareness, knowledge and perception would help to develop specific strategies for increasing the farmers income.

Goats are the backbone of the Indian rural economy as it helps in sustaining the livelihood of rural poor in difficult terrains. The value output from the sheep and goat meat sector has been worth Rs123177 crores during 2020 2021 (Central Statistical Organisation, GoI ). India has diverse small ruminant genetic resources with 44 sheep and 37 goat breeds registered with the ICAR National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources, Karnal. The goat population has colossally increased by 215% (47.2 vs 148.9 million) from 1951 to 2019. Of late, the last two censuses revealed that the goat population in the country increased by 10.1% (135.17 to 148.88 million). The goats are 27.8% of the total livestock population in the country. Their contribution to total meat production is 13.63%. The goat and sheep contributed 1467 million kg of meat in 2021-22 (BAHS, 2022). Goat meat is increasing and is mostly preferred in North and Western India. Meat consumption in India is showing an upward trend but still, there is a lot of scope for improvement in per capita availability. The global Covid-19 pandemic altered the food preferences of the consumer with more demand for safe foods produced under the natural system. The organic food production system may be aptly suited and has potential to meet out demands of consumers. This change in the consumer attitude is gradually increasing the scope and opening more avenues for organic food production and marketing. Food safety legislation in different countries is also working towards improving the safety standards of food and, at the same time, consumers are increasingly willing to pay for quality foods as their disposable incomes rise.

Even since, the man adopted plant cultivation; he attempted various methods of propagation. In ancient time, the only source of plant multiplication was by seeds. Hence, techniques for higher seed germination, improved seed vigour were developed by giving pre-treatment. However, as the knowledge advanced and demands for having true to type plants was realized to man shifted his cultivation practices for some plants from seed to vegetative propagation such as cutting, layering and grafting. The use of cuttings, corm, bulbs, tubers  for multiplication were known to ancient peoples as mentioned in old literature. This method also gave an edge to conserve the genetic gain once developed in a cultivar, since all vegetatively multiplied plants will have some genome and will produce true to type plants. Thus, the development of vegetative propagation method because it is easy method to multiply plants on large scale and develop uniform quality produce.

The bio-degradation process dates back to time immemorial when some wild ruminant animals were spotted feeding on the tree –woods in South Chile. The natives of this place called this feed as “Palo Podrido (Huempe)”, meaning – ‘animal feed’, as opined by F. Zadrazilof Germany. Later on, it was found that thiswood was actuallydegradedbycertaintypes offungi undernatural conditions and decomposed to Spent-wood, which turned out to be the animal feed. The scientists started working on these fungi as well as this type of process. Lately, the fungi were found to be belonging to higher basidiomycetes class, called: White-rot-fungi. They mainly degraded lignin of the wood, however cellulose and hemicelluloses to a limited extent only.

But, surprisingly it was found that the digestibility and crude protein content increased to a considerable extent. Later on, the scientists started working on spent-straws too. The cereal straws (lignocellulosics) constituted a staple-feed (basal) in the developingcountries for theseruminantanimals. But, thepresence of lignin (a biological plastic) limits the utilization of these cereal straws in the rumen eco-system. Thus, the concept of SolidState Fermentation (SSF) sparked into this type of investigation. Some examples of such white-rot-fungi were: Pleurotus ostreatus, Coprinus cineus, Sporotrichum thermophile, Phanerochaete chrysosporium, Polyporous berkeleyi, Neurospora crssa, Alternaria tenius to name a few. Some examples of substrates upon which such types of fungi grew for SSF were: wheat straw, paddy straw, paddy husks, ground nut shells, sugarcane bagasse, barleystraw, sunflower stalk, aspen wood, birch wood, saw dust etc. The resurgence of interest in the use of straw from cereal and grain crops as animal feed had been witnessed in early nineties to maintain the performance of animals. Following were some of the variations undertaken by different scientific groups:

Results of intensive researches in the field of synthetic seed technology seem promising for propagation of crop plants. However, as described in literature, the major stumbling block in establishing artificial seed production as a viable technology is a lack of understanding of the somatic embryo process and an inability to consistently produce high-quality propagules that can germinate in a soil environment with an acceptably high success rate7. Several aspects of the techniques are still underdeveloped and hinder its commercial application.

10.1. LACK OF STANDARD PROTOCOLS

The synthetic seed technology application in a commercial scale is still hampered by the low efficiency of the protocols and logistic behind it. Till today standard protocol for synthetic preparation is available for a limited number of plant species.

Introduction

Pulses belong to the taxonomic family Fabaceae, containing over 18,000 species divided into the three sub-families Mimosoideae, Caesalpinoideae and Papilionoideae. Pulses are commonly cultivated for several decades in all over the world because of the nutritional value of their seeds. Among different pulses, soybean, chickpea, common bean, cowpea, green gram, black gram and pigeon pea contribute significantly to serve the major protein source for the diets of large numbers of people living in Asia, Africa, and South America.

Production and Productivity of Pulses in india

In India, the production of pulses has not been able to keep pace with their domestic demand, resulting in import of 4-5 million tonnes of pulses per annum, especially from the countries like Canada, Myanmar and Australia to meet its domestic requirement (Kumar et al., 2018). India is the largest producer (around 25% of global production), however it consumes 27% and imports around 14% of its pulses requirements. The yield of pulses in India is quite low at 781 kg/ha which might be due to various factors. Pulse crops does not show any significant increase in area and production during 1950-51 to 2009-10, however, significant growth in area and production has been recorded during the last five years (i.e., 2010-2011 to 2016-17), with the adoption of high yielding varieties, increased usage of agricultural inputs like fertilizers and manures etc. The pulses under irrigation are cultivated in about 37% of the area while 63% of pulses are grown under rainfed conditions.

The productivity of pulses has increased about 77% at 779 kg/ha during 2016-17 from the level of 441 kg/ha during 1950-51. It is imperative to mention that the New Agriculture Technology (NAT) introduced during mid-sixties has increased the production of food-grains from 50.82 million tonnes during 1950-51 to 275.68 million tonnes during 2016-17 with the increase in area from 97.32 million hectares to 128 million hectares. In order to achieve self- sufficiency in pulses, the projected requirement by the year 2025 is estimated at 27.5 MT and to meet this requirement, the productivity needs to be enhanced to 1000 kg/ha.

Introduction

The AFLP amplified fragment polymorphism also known as selective restriction fragment amplification (SRFA) technique is used to visualize hundreds of amplified DNA restriction fragments simultaneously. The AFLP band patterns, or fingerprints, can be used for many purposes, such as monitoring the identity of an isolate or the degree of similarity among isolates. Polymorphisms in band patterns map to specific loci, allowing the individuals to be genotyped or differentiated based on the alleles they carry. produces highly complex DNA profiles by arbitrary amplification of restriction fragments ligated to double-stranded adaptors with hemi-specific primers harboring adaptor-complementary 5' termini.The technique has been widely used in the construction of genetic maps containing high densities of DNA marker loci.

The AFLP protocol amplifies restriction fragments obtained by endonuclease digestion of target DNA using “universal” AFLP primers complementary to the restriction site and adapter sequence. However, not all restriction fragments are amplified because AFLP primers also contain selective nucleotides at the 3' termini that extend into the amplified restriction fragments. These arbitrary terminal sequences result in the amplification of only a small subset of possible restriction fragments. The number of amplified fragments can therefore be “tailored” by extending the number of arbitrary nucleotides added to the primer termini. Alternatively, the use of endonuclease combinations that vary in their restriction frequency can also be used to tune the number of amplicons. Generally, the abundant restriction fragments produced from complex genomes require of AFLP primers with longer selective regions. Conversely, analysis of small genomes require of only few arbitrary nucleotides added at the primer 3' termini. The resulting AFLP fingerprints are usually a rich source of DNA polymorphisms that can be used in mapping and general fingerprinting endeavors.

Phosphorus is only second to nitrogen as an inorganic nutrient required by both plants and microorganisms. It stimulates growth of young plants, giving them a good and vigorous start. Phosphorus management and nutrition has both economic and environmental implications. Phosphate constitutes nearly 0.1% of the earth’s crust. They occur in soil in inorganic and organic forms. The organic phosphorus containing compounds are derived from plants and microorganisms and are composed of nucleic acids, phospholipids, lecithin, phytin and related compounds. In soil, 15-85 % of the total P is organic and soils rich in organic matter contain abundant organic P. The inorganic forms are derived from parent rocks or through fertilizers application and manuring with bone meal. They are soluble in water when present as phosphates of Na, K, Ca, Mg etc. Phosphorus exists mainly as apatites, with the basic formula M₁₀ (PO₄) ₆ X₂. Commonly the mineral (M) is Ca, less often Al or Fe. The anion (X) is either F^-, Cl^-, OH^- or CO^2- ₃. Diverse combinations of M and X results in 200 forms of P.

It is a major constituent of nucleic acids in all living systems essential in the accumulation and release of energy during cellular metabolism. This element is added to the soil in the form of chemical fertilizers, or in the form of organic phosphates present in plant and animal residues. In cultivated soils it is present in abundance (i.e. 1100 kg/ha), but most of which is not available to plants, only 15 % of total soil phosphorus is in available form. Both inorganic and organic phosphates exist in soil and occupy a critical position both in plant growth and in the biology of soil.