eChapters

Botany:Coriandrum sativum belonging to the family Umbelliferae. It is an annual soft shrub that attains a height of 1 to 3 feet. Leaves are in basal cluster varies from 3 to 15 cm in length and are oblong to ovate in shape. Leaflets are 1 to 2 centimeter in length and are ovate to round. Flower is of white color which can vary from light purple to creamish in color. These appear in umbles. Fruit is roundish in shape bearing color that varies from yellow to brown. It is tripped and gets divided in to two then crushed with fingers. The plant flowers and fruits in late winters.

Land Requirement: Land to be used for seed production of coriander should be free from volunteer plants

Varieties: CO 1, CO 2, CO 3, CO (CR) 4, GAU 1, UD 1, UD 2, UD 20 and UD 21

Soil: Well drained black cotton soil and red loamy soil. For rainfed cultivation soil should be clay in nature and the pH should be 6 – 8.Coriander performs well at a temperature range of 20 – 25 °C.

Climate: Cool and comparatively dry, frost free climate

I. FILL UPS

1. _____ is called as ‘king of fibres’ and ‘white gold’.
2. _____in the cotton meal is toxic to monogastric animals.
3. A purple spot is found in the claw of the petals is called _____
4. The isolation distance adopted for cotton is _____ for foundation seed.

Botanical description

Cowpea belong to genus Vigna and species unguiculata (L) Walp (Syn V. sinensis Savi) of the family Leguminosae sub family Fabacae.

Floral biology

The flowers of cowpea are hermaphrodite. Self-pollination is effected though with some cross-pollination.

Climate and Soil

Cowpea is a warm season crop, and therefore it can be grown both in spring and in rainy seasons in the plains of India. It cannot tolerate cold weather, heavy rainfall and water logging.

I. FILL UPS

1. Cowpea is a _____ crop.
2. Isolation distance for cowpea foundation seed production is _____.
3. Spacing adopted for cowpea is _____.
4. Seed rate for cowpea seed production is _____.
5. The maximum permitted limit of offtypes for CS is _____.

2.1 Introduction
As time passes, the customers are used to the practice of having short life for the products, which they buy and use. This is because of the globalization of business and growing global competition all over the world. The companies engaged in manufacturing and selling the products which are used at large volume by households and partly by industries, introduce new models to attract customers and to have more market share. This in turn has impacts on customer buying and retention decisions of those products. Though the companies introduce new models, they are expected to keep the prices of the products at affordable ranges so that there is always a larger customer segment to buy those products. This is like egg or chicken situation, because companies introduce many new models to out beat competition and in turn customers expect improved versions of those models in shorter time intervals. This forces companies to continuously engage themselves to come out with new models or improved models which have convergence of technologies to give maximal customer satisfaction. So, creativity in product design becomes an essential requirement of the product development teams of the companies.
2.2 Product Design
Product design aims to include the following tasks to solve the problems of the users or address expected needs of customers in a given market. These tasks are human intensive.
i. Understanding end-users’ requirements
ii. Imagining alternate product ideas to address their needs

Cucurbits account for the largest group of tropical vegetables, consisting of cucumber, muskmelon, bitter gourd, bottle gourd, ridge gourd, sponge gourd, snake gourd, pointed gourd, bitter gourd, ivy gourd, wax or ash gourd, chow chow or chayote, pumpkin, summer squash, winter squash, watermelon etc. They all belongs to the family Cucurbitaceae. They are herbaceous in nature and are characterized by tendril-bearing vines and adaptation to warm climate of the tropics and subtropics. Among the different genera of cucurbit vegetables, three genera viz., Cucumis (cucumbers, melons), Cucurbita (pumpkins, squash), and Citrullus (watermelons), are economically important in the world while the others hold regional importance. Most of the cucurbits are grown for its immature fruits and are consumed as salads or cooked vegetable. While, muskmelon and watermelon are used fresh as dessert fruits. Pumpkin and squashes are used in confectionaries besides as cooked vegetables. Mature ash gourd fruits are used in sweet candy preparation.

Cucurbits are low in calories, minerals, or vitamins. However, bitter gourd is rich source of vitamin C, the squash, pointed gourd, and muskmelon contain good amounts of carotene, kakrol is high in protein, and pointed gourd is rich in calcium. Bitterness in some species of cucurbits was attributed by the varying degree of bitter principles, cucurbitacin. Bitter gourd is known for its hypoglycemic activity due to phytoceutical, cheratin in the fruit, which lowers blood sugar level.

Storage of paddy seed lots after harvesting is one of the crucial aspects of processing shopfloor. Paddy due to increased mechanised harvesting may loose vital seed quality parameters. Since seed growers cannot buy a combined harvester themselves-they resort to hiring of this machine. Sometimes in the hurry of completing harvesting they harvest the crop at un-safe moisture content. This un-safe moisture content may go up to 50-60% also. Harvesting of seed crop with high moisture has adverse effect on storability. Ensuring safe seed moisture is very critical especially during rabi-summer seed production cycle. Most of the growers depend on sun drying for reducing the seed moisture. But paddy should not be dried >3% in one cycle. Follow tempering and convection cooling after every cycle and repeat the cycle till seed attains safe moisture content (14%).

Objective

    1.    Design drum priming (2-3 kg and drying unit with house hold or commonly available materials.
    2.    Standardization of time for seed priming for different crops.

Probable drum priming unit components

A] A vertical drum which need to be rotating
B] A motor which will rotate
C] A desktop assembly
D] A simple two way seed drier (Fig not given here)

I. FILL UPS

1. _____ is the most important source of varietal deterioration during seed production.
2. _____ in oats is caused due to mutation.
3. In peas, _____ is caused due to mutation.
4. _____ is another most important source of varietal deterioration due to introgression to genes from unrelated stocks.
5. _____ is the major source of genetic contamination and varietal deterioration in cross fertilized crop.

Genetic purity (trueness to type) of a variety can deteriorate due to several factors during production cycles. The best means to insure genetic purity therefore, would be to overcome to the greatest possible extent the various factors responsible for genetic deterioration. The important factors of apparent and real deterioration of varieties as listed by Kadam (1942) are as follows:

Developmental variations

Mechanical mixtures

Mutations

Natural crossing

Minor genetic variations

Selective influence of diseases

The technique of the plant breeder

Mechanical damage is inflicted on seeds during harvesting, threshing drying, processing and handling. Injury may occur from any kind of physical abuse. Threshing abuse probably is most serious but, seed conditioning and handling also contribute to seed injury. High temperatures during drying or drying too quick or excessively can cause injury. Susceptibility to mechanical injury increases as the moisture content of the seed decreases. Effect of all individual impacts received by the seed appears to be cumulative in total seed damage. Cereals are largely immune to mechanical injury presumably because of the protective outer structures, the palea and lemma. Large sized legumes are more suscepitable. Small seeds tend to escape injury during harvest and seeds that are spherical tend to suffer less damage than elongated or irregularly shaped ones.

1. VARIETY

Variety is a seed/crop which suit the prevailing agroclimatic conditions, high yielding and possessing desirable attributes such as disease resistance, earliness and grain quality. Similarly, the seed should be pure, appropriate classes, and obtained from an authorised official agency.

I. FILL UPS

1. _____ is a crossing between two genetically dissimilar parents.
2. Detasseling is done in _____.
3. _____ is an example for chemical hybridizing agent.
4. _____ is called as pollen parent.
5. _____ is the fertile counter part of A line.
6. DUS stand for _____.

Dietary constitution of Indian people is mostly cereal based. However, the cereals supply chiefly carbohydrates. Therefore, there is deficiency of protein, minerals and vitamins, especially vitamin A, riboflavin, vitamin C, etc. in the diet. The dieticians advocate the intake of 125 g leafy vegetables, 75 g other vegetables and 100 g root and tuber vegetables (total 300 g) everyday because vegetables provide all the nutrient components like carbohydrates, protein, fat, minerals, vitamins and water along with roughages, which are the essential constituents of a balanced diet.

India has attained food security by increased cereal production due to green revolution. In case of vegetables, although there has been increase in production from 15 million tonnes during 1950 to 94 million tonnes in 2005 but still more vegetables are needed to meet the minimum requirement of at least 250 g per day per capita. There has also been increasing demand for fresh export and for processing industries. Moreover, there is a pressure for increasing vegetable supply caused by constantly increasing population in a world of limited acres.

Addition of new agricultural land is of course not possible. In this situation, plant breeding can be expected to contribute substantially to greater vegetable productivity. This can be accomplished not only by the breeding of basically higher yielding varieties but also by the development of varieties that help to stabilize production through resistance to various biotic and abiotic stresses.

Genetic diversity is one of the fundamental character present in any population or species. It is the total variation either phenotypic or genotypic which have occured in a population through due course of evolution. Variation in any species depends on mutation, substitution (insertion/deletion) and response to selection. However, comprehensive studies on theoretical and empirical perspectives for diversity analysis may be found by evolutionary biologists to understand the factor that influences levels of genetic diversity in natural population (Lewontin, 1974). In brief, nucleotides/ protein codes are the basic unit to quantify total amount of variation. Bioinformatic tools and techniques help us to measure inferring relationships between genes, proteins or organisms through use of these DNA/protein sequences by integration of mathematical algorithms, statistical and computer databases.

Diversity analysis is popularly known as phylogenetic analysis in bioinformatic terms. The basic principle of phylogeny is analysis/alignment of characters; whether it is morphological or molecular data. For instance, in case of morphological data of a crop species, the leaf colour/stem colour/fruit colour/grain size etc. may be compared however sequence data is problem of interest for molecular phylogeny. The evolutionary history of any crop species/ organisms inferred from phylogeny analysis mostly depicted through treelike diagrams/ dendrograms. In this chapter, phylogenetic analysis based on only nucleotide/protein sequences are discussed. For analysis of phylogenetics, default assumptions (Baxevanis and Ouellette, 2006) are:

Previous Year Questions

1. What is DNA fingerprinting? Discuss the applied aspects in modern agriculture. (15M, CSE 2021)

• The term DNA fingerprinting in its original sense refers to the method developed in 1985 by Sir Alec Jeffreys (Jeffreys et al., 1985) and his associates for the simultaneous detection of highly variable DNA fragments by hybridisation of specific multilocus probes to electrophoretically separated restriction fragments?

• The DNA fingerprints, resembling barcodes, are unique to the individual and hence can be used in much the same way as conventional fingerprints - to identify individuals with absolute certainty?

DNA Fingerprinting Techniques

• A large number of fingerprinting techniques are in currency, which are variations and combinations of restriction fragmentation and polymerase chain reaction (PCR).

• Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) involves digesting DNA with restriction enzymes, separating the resultant DNA fragments by gel electrophoresis, blotting the fragments to a filter and hybridising probes to the separated fragments. Specific probe-enzyme combinations give highly reproducible patterns.

• With the advent of PCR technology a number of simpler techniques have become available for molecular characterisation.

• These include, random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and its several variants, intersimple sequence repeats (ISSR), amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and sequence tagged microsatellites sites (STMS).

1. DUS TEST

A variety shall express distinct character(s) for verification, uniformity within population and stability for expression of such characters over the year and at different locations, then only its genetic purity is confirmed.

1.1. Requirements

Authentic seeds of existing varieties, pure seeds of variety under tests, list of characters to be examined and their expression.

This test is conducted in the most optimum conditions of soil and climate and the crop is exposed to the best agronomic management conditions to ensure full expression of the characters.

1.2. Distinctness

The variety under test is compared with the existing varieties (having similar plant height, growth habit, days to flowering, days to maturity and reaction to diseases) for qualitative morphological characters at seed, seedling and plant levels. Biochemical differences may also be considered. To establish the distinctness, the test is performed for 2 years for self pollinated crops.

Introduction

In order to implement the sui generis system for plant variety protection for granting PBR to a breeder or farmer or institution, DUS testing is compulsory. A new variety shall be registered, if it conforms to the criteria of novelty, distinctness, uniformity and stability. An extant variety, a variety about which there is a common knowledge shall also be registered within a specified period, if it conform such criteria as distinctness, uniformity and stability.

Once a valid application for PBR is accepted the seed / plant material of the variety will be requested for official DUS tests. These official DUS tests need to be conducted by crop based institutions on behalf of the PPV & FR authority by following universally acceptable test procedures. This necessitated in the development of test guidelines, descriptors and procedures to be followed in each crop. National Test Guidelines have been developed for 96 crops representing harmonized approach for the testing of new varieties which will form the basis for DUS examination. These National Test Guidelines contain details on i) subject of the guidelines, ii) material required, iii) conduct of tests, iv) methods and observations, v) grouping of varieties, vi) characteristics and symbols, vii) table of characteristics, viii) explanations on table of characteristics, ix) literature and x) technical questionnaire. The registration was open for 107 crop species for new variety and for 114 crop species for extant / farmers varieties.

Onion is a major global commodity, but its value chain is characterized by price volatility, post-harvest losses, fragmented marketing and wide differences between farm-gate and retail prices. This chapter analyses production, trade, marketing and supply-chain trends from global and Indian perspectives. It examines India’s role as a leading producer and exporter and discusses the APMC system, intermediaries, storage deficiencies, Farmer Producer Organisations and export-policy interventions. Digital platforms and technologies—including e-NAM, blockchain traceability, IoT-enabled storage and artificial-intelligence-based price forecasting—are considered for improving transparency, efficiency and coordination. Strategic interventions are proposed to create a more resilient, inclusive, competitive and technology-enabled onion economy

Seed is the primary and essential starting point of a wide range of crops, including the majority of vegetables except those vegetative propagated (e.g- potato and sweet potato). Seedling emergence and field stand establishment is one of the problems facing the growers, especially in early planting where adverse conditions are prevailed (low temperature and high soil moisture). Seed germination and seedling emergence are affected by many factors such as: seed genotype, seed quality (seed viability and seed vigor) and the environmental conditions (moisture and temperature) prevailing during seed germination and subsequent seedling emergence, assuming that the seed is not dormant.