eChapters

Thermal processing also known as heat processing is commonly used processing method which helps in extending the shelf life of the food productswith high safety level, convenience and a healthy product.Seafood as a whole food is highly nutritious. Benefits to human health associated with the consumption of seafood is well recognized for multiple bodily organs and physiological functions but their high perishable nature is a concern. Seafoodundergoes spoilage due to autolytic, microbial action as well as oxidation of lipid. Proper handling and preservation is essential to maintain quality of fish. Heat processing is an age old preservation method practiced in many countries to extend the shelf life of food products. Heat treatment causes the destruction of microbes which increases the shelf life. There are number of thermal processing operations like- baking, blanching, canning, dehydration, extrusion, frying, pasteurization, sterilization, etc. All these operation serves various purposes and helps in manufacture of different food products.

Thermal processing is of utmost importance to low acid high water activity foods, where there are no hindrances to microbial growth. The proper delivery of heat is essential to cause the destruction of microbes to avoid food spoilage. In seafood’s processing, thermal processing through canning (retort pouch processing) is a common approach. In canning, the food is preserved by application of heat in hermetically sealed cans (pouches). Hermetic sealing means- complete airtight sealing. This prevents contamination from outside. Heating at very high temperature ranging from 110 to 135⁰C for a desirable time helps in killing all the vegetative forms of microorganisms as well as most heat resistant microbial spores. The amount of time needed for processing is different for each food type depends on hurdles present in the food and heat transfer characteristics. In thermal processing of seafood products, heat processing is aimed for the destruction of spores of Clostridium botulinum. A number of thermally processed ready-to-eat (RTE) products are available on market shelf.

Maintaining the quality of fish begins with harvest and carries through the harvest-to- consumption chain. Careful handling of fish and shellfish while harvesting and during transport to the processing plant is critical if the high quality of the product is to be maintained. There are, however, several constraints on handling the fish; the important among them are the bacteriological, chemical and physical processes that cause degradation of fish. The surface of dead fish is an ideal growth habitat for bacteria and the end result of such activity is spoiled fish. Reduction of temperature can prevent the growth of many bacteria that cause the spoilage. Chemical breakdown due to oxidative and enzymatic reactions can lead to off odours and flavours and rancidity. Digestive enzymes can initiate decomposition in the dead fish. Physical factors can enhance the bacteriological or chemical processes: bruising, tearing, cutting etc. can expose fish muscle to more rapid bacteriological growth, cause internal bleeding which darkens the fillets and expose greater surface area for chemical oxidation.

Since fish is a highly perishable item of food, it has to be immediately processed to various products to preserve the quality and to increase the shelf life. Fish requires proper handling and preservation to increase its shelf life and retain its quality and nutritional attributes. The objective of handling, processing and preservation is to control or reduce the spoilage process so that the final product is wholesome and safe for the consumer. Fish and fishery products brought to market in a well-preserved condition will generally command higher prices, both at wholesale and retail levels, and thus give better returns to the fishing operation.

Low temperature preservation by chilling and freezing methods are widely practiced to maintain the quality and freshness of fish and fish products. Chilled storage method, i.e., keeping the fish in the unfrozen condition has only limited shelf life and it will vary between 4 and 20 days depending on the condition and species of fish. In frozen storage also the shelf life is restricted but it varies from few weeks to years. The various factors that affect the frozen storage shelf lives are condition of fish at the time of catch, handling, processing and product development, packaging and glazing of the product, freezing method adopted, frozen storage temperature, stacking methods and transportation techniques. These factors can be put together and can be termed as ‘Product, Processing and Packaging’ (PPP) and ‘Time Temperature Tolerance’ factors (TTT).

Quality of fish raw material plays an important role for the quality of the end-product. Once the fish raw material freshness and nutrition value is lost, it cannot be recovered in the processing stages. Products that are processed from low quality raw material are not always a safety risk, but the quality (nutrition value) and shelf life is significantly decreased. The quality deterioration can start right away during fishing and it continues all the way to the final user. Time-temperature abuse should be avoided at all stages of handling till landed fish reaches the consumer or the processor. In tropical countries more care in handling is necessary as fishes thrive in high ambient temperature has high body temperature and hastens spoilage.

Fish is highly perishable because of their chemical composition. It has high content of soluble substances in the flesh (many of which contain nitrogen and triglycerides characterized by polyunsaturated fatty acids) and high level of autolytic enzyme. After the death of the fish, spoilage starts due to the action of microbes, enzyme and oxidation. It is therefore, necessary to preserve fish after harvest if not consumed or disposed immediately.

The 20^th century had seen unprecedented increase in fishing capacity; in terms of the vessel number, increase in size of the vessels and advances in the electronic and navigational equipment coupled with easily manufactured and durable fishing nets. The effect of these innovations sequentially, was the burgeoning in the fish production, plateauing of catches and the myth of inexhaustibility of fishery resources in the sea was proven wrong. A large number of stocks world over have declined and the stock status of many are now alarming, but still the trend towards larger, more powerful and faster vessels continues.

Global fisheries production has reached a plateau and is now hovering around 80 million tonnes during the last decade. It is also noted that the status of world’s marine fish stocks have not improved overall. About 31.4% of assessed fish stocks are fished at a biologically unsustainable level and therefore overfished. Fully fished stocks accounted for 58.1% and underfished stocks 10.5%. It is evident that most of the stocks are fully fished with no further potential for increase in production.

The importance of reducing bycatch and minimizing ecological impacts of fishing operations has been emphasized by scientists and fishery managers and recognized by fishermen. Trawl fisheries in different parts of the world are now being required to use bycatch reduction devices as result of pressure from conservation groups and legal regimes introduced by the governments. The Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (FAO, 1995), which gives guidelines for sustainable development of fisheries, stresses the need for developing selective fishing gears in order to conserve resources, protect non-targeted resources and endangered species. Although the problems of using non-legal gears and designs often with smaller mesh sizes are reported. Most of the problems due to generation of bycatch and damage to the ecosystem function, has been implicated due to trawling.

Bottom or demersal trawling continues to be one of the most important fishing methods of the world. In India more than 35,230 trawlers of various sizes ranging from 9 to 30 m L_OA with engine power ranging from 45 to 495 hp @ 2000 rpm are in operation. Trawl is a bag net towed through water to filter out fishes, the mouth of which is kept open horizontally by means of a beam or otter boards and vertically by means of floats and sinkers. Horizontal mouth opening is also effected by dragging the net from two boats known as bull trawling or pair trawling. The principle of trawling is the movement of the net under water filtering the water through the mesh in the netting, without either permitting the fish to escape or gilling them (Fig. 1). Trawl net is fabricated using polyethylene netting after cutting and shaping the panels as per the design

Netting yarns for the fabrication of fishing gear are either of textile or non-textile origin. Textile materials compose of netting, twine and rope while non-textile origin materials constitute floats, sinkers, hooks etc. Raw material for fish netting consists of fibres which can be distinguished into two groups: natural fibres and man-made fibres. Different kinds of fibres originating from plant and animal body parts have been used for production of textiles and other products and are termed as natural fibres. Natural fibres such as cotton, manila, sisal, jute and coir were the materials exclusively used in earlier days for fishing gear fabrication.

Later, the invention of polymers resulted in synthetic fibres the use of which revolutionalized the fishing industry. In recent decades advances have taken place in fiber technology, along with the introduction of other modern materials. With the introduction of man-made synthetic fibers in India in the late 1950s, natural fibers used for the fishing gears have been substituted by these synthetic materials due to their high breaking strength, low maintenance cost, long service life and better uniformity in characteristics. Most important synthetic fibres used in fisheries are polyamide (PA), polyester (PES), polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP). Other synthetic fibres, which are less widely used and generally restricted to Japanese fisheries, are polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyvinylidene chloride (PVD). Earlier, netting used to be fabricated manually, which is laborious and time consuming while the introduction of synthetic fibres paved way for machine made nettings which are almost exclusively used in fishing net fabrication.

India is situated north of the equator between 8°4' and 37°6' north latitude and 68°7' and 97°25' east longitude, is the largest peninsular country in the world bordered by Arabian Sea in the west, Indian Ocean in the south and the Bay of Bengal in the east. India has a coastline of 8118 km and 0.5 million t sq. km continental shelf endowed with 2.02 million sq. km of Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). It has a catchable annual fisheries potential yield of 4.41 million occupying third rank in world marine fish production (Table 1). India’s territorial waters extend into the sea to a distance of 12 nautical miles from the coast baseline. The vital details on marine capture fisheries of India are given in table

The History of Fish Keeping

Philip Henry Gosse (1810-1888) coined a term “Aquarium” which is now familiar to all of us, in his 1854 book The aquarium: An unveiling of the wonders of the deep sea.

The idea of keeping aquariums can be dated back to 2500 BC and has evolved into a complex hobby that exists today. Ancient Sumerians and Romans kept fish in containers as early as 2500 BC, similar to what we now know as fish tanks. These tanks were designed to keep fish alive long enough to prepare the specimen for food. It is also known that Romans and Babylonians kept ponds filled with fish for ornamental use (History of Fish Keeping as a Hobby).

As time progressed, the art of fish keeping became a “luxury for the rich” (DuHammel 1). Many people consider the Chinese as being the most important contributors to the hobby. “By 1136 AD Emperor Hiau-Tsung started to breed and keep these fish in a more controlled environment. Several new breeds of ornamental fish ornamental emerged.” (DuHammel 1). As more people became involved in the idea of fish keeping, having a goldfish was no longer an indicator of a person’s status. Many common people began to keep goldfish; the fish that they kept represented a good luck charm.

Aquaculture or farming and husbandry of aquatic organisms and plants is the future for increasing aquatic food production. It is the fastest growing food production sector with an annual average growth of >6% in the last two decades. It increased from <1 million tonne in 1950 to 70.2 million tonnes in 2013. An update of aquaculture production (FAO) revealed that the total world aquaculture production continued to grow in 2013, reaching 97.2 million tonnes (live weight) with an estimated value of US$157 billion. A total of 575 aquatic species and species groups are grown in freshwater, seawater and brackish water have been registered in the FAO Global Aquaculture Production Statistics Database. The production of farmed food fish (finfish, crustaceans, molluscs and other aquatic animals) was 70.2 million tonnes in 2013, up by 5.6 % from 66.5 million tonnes in 2012. The production of 27 million tonnes of farmed aquatic plants was a 13.4% jump on the 23.8 million tonnes of 2012. The contribution of aquaculture to the world total fish production reached 43.1%, up from 42.1% in 2012. It was only 30.6% a decade ago in 2003. Meanwhile, world production of aquatic plants, mostly seaweeds, is still overwhelmingly dominated by aquaculture (95.5% in 2013). On a global scale, the production of major non-fed species contributed 30.7% to world food fish aquaculture production in 2013, including 13.9 million tonnes of bivalves and 7.7 million tonnes of filter-feeding carps.

Mariculture involves the cultivation of marine organisms for food and other products in an enclosed section of the sea (cages/pens), or in tanks, recirculating systems, ponds or raceways in seawater..It is a promising sector by which the additional marine fish requirement can be met in the future years. It is also the fastest growing sub-sector of aquaculture. At global level, mariculture produces many high valued finfishes, crustaceans and molluscs viz. oysters, mussels, clams, cockles and scallops. In 2013 mariculture has contributed around 25.5 million tonnes of foodfish globally which formed about 36.3 %of the foodfish aquaculture production(World food fish aquaculture production was 70.2 million tonnes in 2013). Molluscs dominated the global mariculture production (59.7%) followed by finfish (22.7%), crustaceans (16.2%) and others (1.4%). In addition about 26.9 million tonnes of macro algae were also produced by mariculture. The total mariculture production including seaweeds was 52.4 million tonnes in 2013 which constituted 53.9% of the total aquaculture production (The total global aquaculture production including the aquatic plants was 97.2 million tonnes in 2013).

Finfish and aquatic invertebrates are part of Fish Genetic Resources (FiGR) that has actual or potential value for culture and capture fisheries. Fish as a group, have the highest species diversity among all the vertebrate taxa. Out of 62,305 species of vertebrates recognized world over, 32,064 (~ 52%) are valid fish species; of which, the great majority (97%) are bony fishes, mainly teleosts; and the remaining (3%) are cartilaginous fishes (sharks & rays) and jawless fishes (lampreys and hagfishes) (Eschmeyer and Fricke, 2012). India is blessed with vast fishery resources, like exclusive economic zone (2.02 m sq. km), coast line (8,129 km), ponds and tanks (2.254 m ha), beels, ox-bow lakes and swamps (1.3 m ha), reservoirs (2.90 m ha), rivers and canals (173,287 km), brackish water (1.235 m ha) (Ayyappan et al., 2011). The country is fortunate to possess vast and varied fish genetic resources in different aquatic ecosystems and being home to 7.84% of global finfish diversity, with 3535 species of fish, of which 3035 are native species, representing 46 orders, 252 families and 1,018 genera. The 500 exotic fishes are also covered and majority of them are of ornamental fishes. Out of the 3035 native fishes, 1016 are freshwater, 113 are brackish water and 1906 are marine species and at least 258 species are of commercially important (NBFGR, 2016-17). India harbours a rich diversity of fishes and four out of 34 biodiversity hotspot areas of the world. The biodiversity hotspots i.e. the Western Ghats and North East India harbours maximum endemic freshwater fishes. The Western Ghats harboring about 306 finfishes out of which nearly 69% are endemic to the region (Gopalakrishnan and Ponniah, 2000). Likewise North East India, another biodiversity hotspot area, harbors about 240 fin fishes and nearly 40% are endemic to the region (Sarkar et al. 2012). In the past one and half decades more than 50 new species were described from these areas and more than 10 new species were described from the marine environment.

Fish as a cheap source of protein, bioavailable minerals, vitamins and essential fatty acids, ensures global nutritional security. India witnessed around 14-fold increment in fish production from 0.7 million tonnes in 1950’s to 10.43 million tonnes in 2014-15. With a contribution of 5.05% to world’s capture production and 6.6% of total aquaculture fish production, India emerged as one among the most progressive fish producing countries in the world. Fisheries as a major agricultural sector, constitutes 0.92% of total GDP and 5.58% of total agricultural GDP of India. With the global fish export value of 148,147 million USD, India ranked seventh position among the top fish exporters of the world. The sector is crucial in securing food supply, job opportunities, nutritional needs and earning foreign exchange for the country, cataloguing it as a sunrise sector of Indian economy.

Technological developments in harvest sector

Introduction of new materials for fishing gears, mechanization of fishing crafts and modern electronic technologies for navigation and fish location, paved way for the significant increase in fish production in India over the years. ICAR-CIFT, Cochin has been involved in the design and optimization of a range of crafts and gears since its inception, which gave a major fillip to the harvest sector of Indian fisheries. Considering the plateauing/decline in catches perceptible since last two decades, ICAR-CIFT has shifted its focus from increasing production to responsible harvest of resources. As a result a large number of technologies for sustainable harvest and green technologies with reduced emissions were developed.

5.1 Population Growth

In 2000, the world had 6.1 billion human inhabitants. This figure may rise to more than 9 billion in the next 50 years. For the last 50 years, world population multiplied more rapidly than ever before, and more rapidly than it will ever grow in the future. Anthropologists believe the human species dates back at least 3 million years. For most of our history, these distant ancestors lived a precarious existence as hunters and gatherers. This way of life kept their total numbers small, probably less than 10 million. However, as agriculture was introduced, communities evolved that could support more people.

World population expanded to about 300 million by A.D. 1 and continued to grow at a moderate rate. But after the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, living standards rose and widespread famines and epidemics diminished in some regions. Population growth accelerated. The population climbed to about 760 million in 1750 and reached 1 billion around 1800.

In 1800, the vast majority of the world’s population (86 percent) resided in Asia and Europe, with 65 percent in Asia alone. By 1900, Europe’s share of world population had risen to 25 percent, fueled by the population increase that accompanied the Industrial Revolution. Some of this growth spilled over to the Americas, increasing their share of the world total. The 2000 growth rate of 1.4 percent, when applied to the world’s 6.1 billion population, yields an annual increase of about 85 million people. Because of the large and increasing population size, the number of people added to the global population will remain high for several decades, even as growth rates continue to decline.

Between 2000 and 2030, nearly 100 percent of this annual growth will occur in the less developed countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, whose population growth rates are much higher than those in more developed countries.

4.1 Urban Issues

(i) Water Problem

The world’s population is increasingly found in the cities. Now a days, throughout the developing world, urbanization trends are gaining speed and are irreversible. From a technical standpoint, it is easier to provide water and sanitation services to people living closer together in urban settings than in dispersed rural communities. However, the costs of meeting the needs are much higher per capita, and are growing. The health risks posed by the lack of sanitation increase exponentially as densities increase and as people share drinking water and sanitation resources.

The urban environmental sanitation crisis in developing countries is taking a large health, economic, and environmental toll on all city residents. Willingness to pay for basic water and sanitation services is often high in peri- urban neighbourhoods, provided that services are appropriate, effective, and affordable. The use of a strategic sanitation approach should helps to build capacity within implementing agencies and enhances the ability of communities to make sustainable sanitation improvements.

(ii) Energy Problem

Energy is basic to development. Modern energy services are powerful engine of economic and social opportunity: no country has managed to develop much beyond a subsistence economy without ensuring at least minimum access to energy services for a broad section of its population. It is not surprising to find, therefore, that the billion who live in developing countries attach a high priority to energy services. On average, these people spend nearly 12% of their income on energy. At the same time, the provision of energy services especially through the combustion of fossil fuels and biomass can create adverse environmental effects. In rich countries, much attention is directed to the regional and global consequences of fuel combustion, because many of the local effects have been controlled at considerable expense over the past half- century. In developing countries, the local environmental problems associated with energy use remain matters of concern that are as, or even more, urgent than they were in industrialized countries 50 or 100 years ago. Further, it is the poor who suffer most severely from such problems, because it is they who are forced to rely upon the most inefficient and polluting sources of energy services for lack of access to better alternatives.

3.1 Air Pollution

Air pollution is a phenomenon by which particles either a solid or liquid and gases contaminate the environment. Such contamination can result in health effects on the population, which might be either chronic arising especially from long-term exposure or acute due to accidents. Other effects of pollution may be damage to materials, agricultural damage namely reduced crop yields and tree growth, impairment of visibility namely tiny particles scatter light very efficiently, and even climate change global warming.

3.1.1 Classification of Air Pollutants

Air Pollutants are classified as Natural as well as Anthropogenic. Natural pollutants are those that are found in nature or are emitted from natural sources. For example, volcanic activity produces sulfur dioxide, and particulate pollution may derive from forest fires or windblown dust. Anthropogenic pollutants are those that are produced by humans or controlled processes. For example, sulfur dioxide is produced by fossil fuel combustion and particulate matter comes from diesel engines.

Air pollutants are further classified as primary or secondary. Primary pollutants are those that are emitted directly into the atmosphere from an identifiable source. Examples include carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide. Secondary pollutants are those that are produced in the atmosphere by chemical and physical processes from primary pollutants and natural constituents. For example, ozone is produced by hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen (both of which may be produced by car emissions) and sunlight.

2.1 Ecosystem

An ecosystem can be defined as a dynamic entity composed of a biological community and its associated abiotic environment. Often the dynamic interactions that occur within an ecosystem are numerous and complex. Ecosystems are also always undergoing changes or alterations to their biotic and abiotic components. Some of these alterations begin first with a change in the state of one component of the ecosystem which then cascades and sometimes amplifies into other components because of relationships.

The human activities of various kinds have resulted in caused a number of dramatic changes to a variety of ecosystems found on the Earth. Humans use and modify natural ecosystems through agriculture, forestry, recreation, urbanization, and industry. The most obvious impact of humans on ecosystems is the loss of biodiversity. The number of extinctions caused by human domination of ecosystems has been steadily increasing since the start of the Industrial revolution. The frequency of species extinctions is correlated to the size of human population on the Earth which is directly related to resource consumption, land-use change, and environmental degradation. Other human impacts to ecosystems include species invasions to new habitats, changes to the abundance and dominance of species in communities, modification of biogeochemical, and modification of hydrologic cycling, pollution, and climatic change.

1.1 Forest Resources

Forest resources usually provide the raw materials for homes, workplaces, the books and newspapers, and the packaging that contains food and other products of our labor. Forest ecosystems supply our water, maintain our climate, and help purify the air, protect soils, and provide for wilderness experiences. Forests provide habitat for wildlife, and serve as preserves of biological diversity. Forests are sources of food, fuel and medicine for people all over the world. Forests shape the recreational landscape, help stabilize our farms, and enhance our cities.

About 30 per cent of the world’s total land areas are covered by forest with the area of 3.9 billion hectares. Nearly 47 percent of the world’s forests are in the tropics, 33 percent in the boreal zone, 11 percent in the temperate zones, and 9 percent in sub-tropical areas. The 94 million hectares of forest lost over the ten-year period, represented about 2 per cent of the world’s total forest cover, or an area larger than Venezuela. Two thirds of the world’s forests are located in ten countries: the Russian Federation, Brazil, Canada, the United States, China, Australia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Indonesia, Angola and Peru. Most of the deforestation work was performed in natural tropical forests, which lost 14.2 million hectares a year over the last decade. Africa and South America have suffered the most deforestation.

Africa was the region with the highest deforestation in the world, which lost 5.3 million hectares of forest per year in the 1990s. Forests are a major factor in the climate change issue. Forest ecosystems contain more than half of all terrestrial carbon, and account for about 80 per cent of the exchange of carbon between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. Deforestation in the 1980s may have accounted for a quarter of all human-induced carbon emissions, the second greatest emitter after fossil fuels. Forest plantations comprise 5 percent of the world’s forests. Asia has the largest area of plantations, accounting for 62 per cent of the world total. China accounts for 24 percent of that total and India, 18 per cent. Plantations supply about 35 percent of the world’s round wood. The area of forest plantations increased by an average of 3 to 4 million hectares per year during the 1990s. Half of this increase was the result of afforestation on land previously under non-forest land use, whereas the other half resulted from conversion of natural forest. There are reports that 12 percent of the world’s forests, or about 480 million hectares, are in protected areas.

Cucurbits are major crops of countries having a wide variety of vegetables. Cucurbits include bottle gourd, bitter gourd, pumpkins, squashes, ridge gourd, sponge gourd, and cucumbers. Cucurbits are a large, diverse crop group that are susceptible to over 200 diseases (Zitter et al., 1996). A wide range of pathogens affect the productivity of cucurbits. The diseases may be caused by fungi, bacteria, Cucurbits crops are warm-season large group of crops that are cultivated and harvested over different seasons like spring, summer, and winter. These crops as a group are an important part of a diverse and nutritious diet. Melons are eaten as fruits, whereas summer and winter squashes, cucumber, and pumpkin are eaten as vegetables. In addition, cucurbits are used for fiber, utensils, decoration, ceremonial and medicinal purposes.

A wide range of pathogens affect the productivity of cucurbits, which constitute over 200 diseases (Zitter et al., 1996). The diseases may be caused by fungi, bacteria, viruses, or mycoplasma- like organisms. The disease may be soilborne, seedborne (carried by seed), spread by wind, or transmitted by insect vectors. The moisture content of the seed, storage period, prevailing temperature, and degree of invasion influence the development of seedborne fungi (Anjorin and Mohammed 2009). The pathogen may cause seed abortion and rot, necrosis, reduction, or elimination of germination capacity as well as seedling damage at later stages of plant growth, resulting in the develop- ment of the disease as systemic or local infection (Khanzada et al., 2001). The diseases cause heavy loss in terms of yield and quality. The diseases caused by pathogen are controlled by fungicides against fungal diseases, antibiotics for bacterial diseases, or insecticide in case of viruses transmitted by insect vectors. The diseases of cucurbetaceous crops can be managed by adopting different cultural, biological, and chemical methods of disease management. The following management practices are required to be taken into consideration for raising disease-free cucurbitaceous crops:

Introduction

Spine gourd/Teasel gourd (English), (Momordica dioica Roxb.) is popularly known as Kantola or Kakrol in India. It is a perennial, dioecious, cucurbitaceous climbing creeper that belongs to the cucurbitaceae family (Raj et al., 1993). The spine gourd is also called as janglee karela (Harish, 2008). The crop is cultivated for its fruits, which are used as vegetable (Sastri, 1962). Young twigs and leaves of this crop are also used as vegetable (Bandyopadhyay and Mukherjee, 2006). The fruit is rich in ascorbic acid and contain iodine (Rao, 2001). Karnataka and West Bengal are the two main states that cultivate spine gourd commercially. Indira Kankoda I (RMF 37) is a new commercial hybrid variety of spine gourd developed by Indira Gandhi Agricultural University. This hybrid variety is commercially cultivated in the states of Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra and Jharkhand. Spine gourd can also be grown well up to an altitude of 1500 m in Assam and Garo hills of Meghalaya (Ram et al., 2002). This popular vegetable has high demand in market but still remain underutilized and underexploited mainly due to its vegetative mode of propagation and dioecious nature (Bharathi et al., 2010). Adopting improved genotypes and standardized agro- techniques can increased the yield potential of spine gourd (Tiwari and Tigga, 2015).

Introduction

Amaranthus species were grown as the principle grain crop by the Aztecs 5,000 to 7,000 years ago, prior to the disruption ofthe South American civilization by the Spanish Conquistadors. Synonyms such as “mystical grains of the Aztecs,” “super grain of the Aztecs,” and the “golden grain of the Gods” were used to describe the nutritious amaranth grain. Vegetable Amaranthus spp. were and are presently utilized for food from such diverse geographic areas as southwestern United States, China, India, Africa, Nepal, South Pacific Islands, Caribbean, Greece, Italy, and Russia (Stallknecht et. al., 1993). Amaranthus grain is extremely nutritional pseudo-cereal with a higher amount of proteins when compared to true cereals. It is a reasonably well balanced food with functional properties that have been shown to provide medicinal benefits. Amaranth associate underutilized crop and an inexpensive supply of proteins, minerals, vitamin A and C, appears to be a future crop which may substantiate this demand because of its tremendous yield potential and biological process qualities, conjointly recently gained worldwide attention (Topwal, 2019). Amaranth as a unique plant with a long and mysterious history is the obj ect for science and also for business. Its characteristics such as absence of gluten and special composition of oil lead this plant to the position of very important plant for the future. The Advantages of Amaranth for Food Industry: Gluten-free, High-quality protein, Non Food-allergy, Thickening property of amaranth starch. The Advantages of Amaranth oil for Cosmetic Industry: Squalene content has a preserve function for skin and hair against sun and radiation, Available for very sensitive skin, Non- Allergy amaranth oil on skin. Amaranth has a big advantage, because it could be use by two ways-biomass for the bio fuel production and grain for food production (Matusova, 2008). As dyes, the flowers of the ‘Hopi Red Dye’ amaranth were used by the Hopi (a tribe in the western

Onion (Allium cepa) and garlic (Allium sativum) are monocots originating from Asia. These are collectively called as Alliums and formerly classified with the Liliaceae (lilies and relatives). But, now they have been classified in their own family the Alliaceae. The plants ofAlliaceae family are mostly used for seasoning and cooking. Some common crops in the family are bulb onion (Allium cepa), spring or salad onion (A. cepa), bunching onion (A. fistulosum), garlic (A. sativum), leek (A. porrum).

Onions and garlic are prone to several different diseases, especially in wet growing seasons. These often get started on their leaves, and if severe, can reduce bulb growth and yield. Another way onion diseases can cause damage is when they infect bulbs later in the season, which may lead to losses in storage. Some important diseases of onion and garlic are being discussed in this chapter: