Agriculture

The experiment was conducted to study the effect of varying plant population of two sorghum cultivars on growth and yield at research area Gash Delta Eastern Sudan, during 2014/15 and 2016/17) seasons. The RCBD design used for split-split plot trail. The treatments include two cultivars (Tabat andAklamoi) and three planting densities (spacing within the row of 30, 45 and 60 cm between holes and the number of seeds per hole factor with 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 10 seeds per hole).The obtained results revealed that, the two tested sorghum cultivars particularly in the second seasons showed highly significant differences in stem girth, leave area index, panicle/m2, seeds /panicle, 100-seed weight and grain yield/ha. Aklamoi was better than Tabat in panicle/m2, 100-seed weight while, Tabat exceeded Aklamoi in stem girth, leaf area and grain yield particularly at plant population 208333 plant/ha which was achieved from 30cm inter-row spacing with five plants/hole in the first Season. The obtained grand mean of grain yield of Sorghum and the observations across the two experimental seasons indicate the high adaptability, the highest growth and the highest grain yield of Sorghum under the conditions of the Gash Delta. Early maturity of sorghum cultivars is more important to cultivate under shortage flooding seasons.

The use of environmental models requires a mathematical turn of mind. Amongst the models that have been tested in various ecosystem and cropping system namely: CENTURY 4.0, RothC, CERES, NCSOIL, SUNDAIL and STICS; the CENTURY 4.0 have been extensively modified and configured especially for carbon and nitrogen cycling. This work presents the step by step process especially in amending the FERT.100 file, weather and management information, parametisation and events scheduling and running to equilibrium. It will be relevant to beginners who would like to test the model in their region.

Measuring of soil moisture level is important for many hydrological, biological and biogeochemical processes. Using of neutron meter equipment to measure soil moisture is limited close to the soil surface due to the escaping of neutrons which known as surface effect. In present work, the dimension of a cylindrical paraffin cylinder has been evaluated to correct the surface effect in order to use neutron moisture meter close to the soil surface by MCNPX code. The result show a cylindrical paraffin cylinder with 16 cm radius and 4.8, 5, 5.3, 5.6, 6 cm thickness can correct the surface effect well for 0.10, 0.20, 0.30, 0.40, and 0.50 g/g soil moisture, respectively. As well as, the paraffin cylinder is a good shield to reduce the radiation dose.

Objective: The objective is to compare the sugarcane performance under contour -zonary cultivation techniques with the one under traditional cultivation techniques. Method: Sugarcanes of both Qiantang 4 and Qiantang 5 were planted with different techniques. When they reached technical maturity, the samples of their roots, leaves, stems, number of ratoon cane buds etc. were collected, measured and compared to find out the differences of the yield and quality of the sugarcanes cultivated with different techniques. Result: It is found that sugarcanes under the cultivation with contour -zonary techniques had following characters that were fresh root weight increasing by 92.81-117.57%, functional leaf number increasing by 10.11-14.68%, cane stem production increasing by 16.65-17.57%, cane sucrose contents increasing by 4.05-4.07% and ratoon number increasing by 62.81-65.10%. Conclusion: Sugarcanes cultivated with contour -zonary cultivation techniques perform better than the ones cultivated with traditional cultivation techniques in both their yield and their qualities.

Accurate estimation of water and soil losses from agro-ecologically diverse areas is extremely important for designing appropriate resource management or soil/ water conservation measures. The developed KW-GIUH-MUSLE(Kinematic wave-Geomorphlogical Instantaneous Unit Hydrograph-Modified universal Soil loss equation) model is tested for its sediment yield estimation potential on three agro-ecologically diverse micro-watersheds in Almora district of Uttranchal. It is observed that estimates are associated with about 49% mean relative errors and mean DV value of about 0.51 in Salla Rautella and Naula micro-watersheds. This showed that point predictions of annual sediment yields are of moderate quality. However, root mean square error estimates and comparison of mean and standard deviation values for the observed and simulated sediment yields showed that long term sediment yields could be estimated quite realistically. This is also observed in Deolikhan micro-watershed that storm wise sediment yield estimates are associated with about 6% mean relative error and 0.94 mean DV value. The analysis thus clearly showed that the developed KW-GIUH-MUSLE model could indeed be utilized for obtaining reasonable sediment yield estimates for un-gauged/ inadequately gauged micro-watersheds.

The study was carried out to evaluate various selected crops which were used as intercrops to control fruit drop in hot pepper (Capsicum frutescens). A Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) was used. There were six treatments and four replications. The treatments were control (pepper), Pepper-tomato, Pepper-mint, Pepper-citronella, Pepper-onion and Pepper-garden eggs intercrops. It was observed that there were significant differences between the mean total number and weight of harvested marketable pepper fruits but the other means were not significantly different for the other parameters that were observed. Pepper-citronella recorded the highest number of harvested pepper fruits. Pepper-tomato intercrop recorded the least number of harvested pepper fruits. Percentage fruit drop in the pepper fruit was high in all treatments.

After cereals, oil seeds are the second source of food, and canola is the third source of oil seeds crop in the world after palm oil and soybean. This study was performed as factorial in RCBD design, First factor included cultivars (Zarfam, Talaye, Okapy) and second factor included drought stress (control, 60% FC, 40%Fc), also some properties were studied such as Superoxide dismutase, Proxidase, Catalase, yield. Totally, results showed that antioxidant enzymes increase as one mechanism in responses to stress and cultivars had different amount of enzyme unit. Between cultivars Zarfam and Talaye had highest antioxidant enzyme, respectively, highest means of SOD (31.6), POD (46) and CAT (23 Enzyme activity unit per mg protein) were obtained by Zarfam cultivar in 40% FC condition. Enzyme unit increased by increasing of drought levels and Zarfam, Talaye and Okapy showed 219, 198 and 112 gr/m2 yield in 40% FC condition.

The occurrence of Diaretiellarapaeparasitizing Lipaphiserysimiin Brassica alba,Brassica campestris cv. BSH-1, Brassica carrinata,Brassica nigra,Erucasativa cv. T-27, BrassicajunceaL. cv. Varuna,YST-151 and GSC-6 were evaluated.The correlation coefficients between aphid population and D. rapaeand its hosts on different Brassica species with different abiotic factors revealed contradictory results.Except for a few instances the weather parameters showed low order of associations with L. erysimiand its parasitism byDiaeretiellarapae. Thus, the ecologicalfactors exhibited little impact on the population build- up of mustard aphidand its parasitism byDiaeretiellarapaeon different species of Brassica.Brassicanigraharboured relatively higher populations of the aphid While,B. carrinataand Taramina,T-27 have lower aphid population.

Electrical properties of sugarcane stalks were studied in order to develop a rapid and non-destructive assessment technique and to determine the mass of sugarcane stalks. A 5 V sine wave AC power supply and a rectangular parallel plate capacitor sample were used to span the difference in capacitance caused by the insertion of sugarcane stalks between the plates. To remove the effect of air gap between the plates, an equivalent capacitor was derived. The correlation between mass of sugarcane stalks and output voltage from the device for each sample was investigated. Experiments indicated a high correlation between mass and output voltage for each sample of sugarcane stalks and a quadratic trend line was best fitted to the data. The coef?cient of determination (R2) between actual mass and presented voltage was 0.955. For testing results, the coef?cient of determination (R2) of mass prediction was obtained as 0.969. This method can con?dently predict the mass of sugarcane stalks and it can be used in different machines and agricultural mechanism.

Diverse soil management practices exist even within a narrow transect of farming areas in Nepal. This variation is principally due to location of farm households along the spatial gradient, infrastructure availability, market demands and farmers’ awareness to on-farm resource conservation. Over-exploitation of farm resources was negligible and disturbance to agro-ecology was minimal in the past couple of decades. In the last decade, however, due to a massive sprawl in the available farmlands along with a shift of subsistence farming towards market-oriented conventional approach, prime agricultural lands have been over-exploited. This led to negative repercussion on production base and farmers’ livelihoods. This paper concerns with the simulation of farm income through spatial modeling considering the strategy of sustainable soil management practices. Spatial modeling shows higher farm income gains due to intervention in rural areas (low income zone) and peri-urban areas (high income zone) with existing unsustainable soil management practices. Spatial explicit assessment shows that integration of micro-survey into spatial environment and subsequently modeling of present and future situation would add more information on the results from conventional surveys. Therefore spatial effects should be duly considered while formulating agriculture and rural development policies.