Agriculture

In recent time, there is increasing interest in diversified agricultural production systems to obtain higher yields per unit area through better use of natural resources, minimizing the incidence of insect pests and diseases, greater stability and crop insurance offered by intercropping systems. Field experiment was conducted during the rainy seasons of 2011 and 2012 at the Teaching and Research Farm of the Faculty of Agriculture, Nasarawa State University, Keffi – Lafia Campus to study the effect of poultry manure and planting arrangement on the soil physico-chemical properties and yield of Sesame/groundnut mixture. The experiment consisted of four rates of poultry manure (0, 3.0, 6.0 and 9.0 t ha-1) and two planting arrangement (single alternate row and double alternate row planting arrangement). The eight treatment combinations were laid out in randomized complete block design with four replications. The results obtained showed that the soil physical structure was slightly improved; total N, available P and organic carbon of the experimental soil were increased by 20, 62 and 6% respectively after the experiment. Yield and yield characters of the two crops were significantly increased by the application of 6 t ha-1 of poultry manure and double row planting arrangement. Land equivalent ratio was greater than unity indicating that the intercropping system was advantageous.

The study measures dairy research in in top three milk producing countries (i.e. India, USA and China) and identify leading players in dairy research during 2001-2010, based on number of parameters, including publication, citation, impact, p-index, h-index and global publication share. The 20 most productive countries were selected and evaluated. The status of research output and milk production in G-7 countries and developing countries were examined. The data on publication citation and h-index were drawn from two databases i.e. Web of Science and Scopus. USA is giving maximum output in quantity and quality of publications, Other major players are UK, France, Germany, Netherland, Canada, Switzerland and Australia. Production of milk is highest in India and it has 10th rank in GDP but lagged behind in dairy research. The developing countries like India, China, Pakistan, Brazil, Poland, Mexico, Argentina and Romania are producing significant amount of milk but share in the research output is very less.

This study focused on the production of fuel briquettes from wheat offal. The variables investigated are particle size and blending ratio. The wheat offal used was sourced from Maiduguri Flour Mill. The material was sieved into fine, medium and coarse particle sizes using 1mm and 2mm wire mesh. Each particle size was thoroughly mixed with gelatinous cassava starch in ratios; 90:10, 85:15, 80:20 and 75:25 by weight. The blended material was then hand-fed into a 3.11cm x 40.50cm cylindrical mould and compressed at a pressure of 10.76kg.cm-2. In order to have enough briquettes for material testing, each production was replicated 10 times. The physical properties; stability of the briquettes was evaluated as a function of compressed and relaxed density, relaxation ratio, moisture content while the combustion properties; %volatile matter, %ash content, %fixed carbon and heat value were evaluated for each production. The result shows that all the physical properties of the briquette were greatly influenced by particle size (p<0.001). In density, there is no significant effect of the binder level on the briquette produced but gives the highest result when medium particles size was used with the valued of 1.06g/cm3 and lowest in coarse particle 0.46g/cm3, binder level had no significant effect on briquette produced (p= 0.281).The EMC was best in medium particle size with the value 131.25% at 25% binder level with the value 135.63%, EMC was significantly affected by binder level. Volatile matter was not influenced by particle size and binder level at (p=0.581) and (p=0.980) respectively but has better performance in medium particle size of 4.30% at 15% with the value of 4.14%. Ash content was not significantly influenced by particle size at (p=0.0069) but significantly influenced by binder level at (p<0.002) and was preferable in medium particles of 2.40% at 10% binder level with the value 2.08%. Fixed carbon was not influenced by particle size at (p=0.150), also better in medium particle of 93.84% at 20% binder level with value 94.01%, while Heat value was influenced by particle size and binder level at( p=0.005)and (p=0.0021) respectively, highest with medium particles of 33.52mj/kg at 20% level of binder with the value 33.59mj/kg. It was observed that better and combustible briquette can be obtained from medium particles of wheat offal at low binder ratio.

During the recent decade, the anthropogenic activities have become dominating factor towards the problem of climate variability and change. This climate variability has become the centre of many scientific studies. The objective of this paper was to investigate the total wheat yield during the time period of 1989-2009 and the overall impact of climate on the wheat yield in the provinces of Pakistan. The key meteorological variables that influenced the wheat yield were identified, the correlation and regression functions between climate relevant wheat yield and these variables were established. The correlation analysis revealed a significant relationship between wheat yield and climatic variable and regression analysis revealed that high level of variance in wheat production could be explained by climatic parameters under study. The findings of the research suggested an intensification of research as well as the appropriate measures at raising wheat yields.

Present study focused on detection of Aspergillus and Curvularia species from contaminated peri-urban agricultural area of Kasur by soil serial dilution method. Genetic variability among the fungi was determined by RAPD technique. Genomic DNA was extracted and amplified with 8 RAPD markers which were previously designed for Aspergillus species. Amplified products of DNA were analyzed electrophoretically and fragments ranging in 250-10000bp were generated. Clustering analysis was accomplished and a significant genetic relation was found in the isolates of these two genera which would be helpful in devising management approaches appropriate to bioremediation of contaminated soils.

Population growth and increase need greater utilization of resources such as food, water, soil, energy, machinery, manpower and other inputs lead to use them more than last era for earn more production. And better management methods; minimize operational cost to reach maximum profitability more attention is placed on agricultural systems. Since sugar cane is one of the major plants under cultivation in the septet agro industry reach to 84000 hectares in Khuzestan province and a case study is Karun agro industry that has total area 40000 hectare which currently 25000 hectare is arable. On the other hand one of the most expenses in each agricultural production systems is machinery cost, increase in efficiency of farm machinery can affect on production costs. As regards in most cases manager of agricultural mechanization unit don’t know exactly how can use the machinery in different farm operation (tillage, planting, intercultural and harvest) at optimum condition and detect factors that lead to decrease in field efficiency. So consideration of farm machinery field efficiency is necessary. Between farm Operation, sugar cane harvesting is more important because have high volume of work. The purpose of this article is to show how Global Positioning Systems, or GPS data, can provide very useful information about the efficiency of sugarcane harvester. In the past, calculation of field efficiency was very difficult, time consuming, and required someone with a stopwatch on-site during operation. But now by combining GPS data in other software like: Garmin Map source, Google earth and Arch map can be used to produce maps of navigation and obtain farm machinery management factors like field efficiency, material capacity and field index that were calculate for this study 69%, 51.5 ton/hour and 63% respectively.

In distinguishing two sizes of three Iraniandry date cultivars, the acoustic system and artificial neural network was combined for the first time. Various features obtained from sound analysis were entered as ANN input set. Appropriate features have significant effect in final result of the network. Frequency features of sound signals are computed via a 1024-point FFT. Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), Phase and Power Spectral Density (PSD) of impact signals were calculated. Several combinations of selected and extracted features were used as input set in a multilayer perceptron neural network with a back propagation algorithm, with 60%-25%-15% of data astraining, validation and testing sets.The optimized MFNN was distinguished Dayiri sizes with 93.687Correct Detection Rate (CDR), Piarum sizes with 81.035 CDR and Zahidisizes with 91.

The study was designed to assess the level of farmers’ participation in organic farming practices in a rural farming community using a sample of 63 randomly selected farmers. The results show that there is a general awareness of climate change among the respondents. In addition, majority of the farmers considered the rise in temperature as the most prominent indicator of climate change in the research area. The major specific change considered to be as a result of climate change was the late on set of rainfall. The farmers moderately participated in organic farming practices but not deliberately to mitigate climate change. It was therefore recommended that extension agents should enlighten farmers on the potentials of organic farming practices in mitigating climate change.

A field experiment was carried out in 2007, 2008 and 2009 at Samaru, Zaria, Nigeria to determine the response of two Chilli pepper (Capsicum frutescens L.) varieties (Bird’s eye and Dantsiga) to five harvesting frequencies (weekly, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks and once at the end of the rains). Factorial combinations of the treatments were replicated three times and laid out in a randomized complete block design. Gross and net plots were 9m2 and 4.5m2 respectively. A spacing of 75cm x 30cm was used. Appropriate agronomic and crop protection practices were adopted to ensure adequate crop performance. The results showed that variety Dantsiga had significantly longer fruits, higher fruit diameter, number of seeds per fruit and dry fruit yield per hectare. There was no difference between the two varieties in the number of fruits per plant. Harvesting every two weeks resulted in significantly higher fruit yield and number of seeds per fruit throughout the three years of study.

The study examined the determinants of consumption of food away from home (FAFH) in the urban sector. The socio-economic characteristics of the respondents and factors motivating it were identified as well as factors that influence the consumption of food away from home. The study used two stage sampling method to select 118 respondents that was used for the study. Data collected were analysed using ordinary least square model. The result revealed that 8 out of the 17 variables considered to influence consumption of FAFH were significant and these are household size, number of children under 6yrs, children between 7 and13years as well as 14 and 17years, total number of visit per week to places for food away from home, number of working female adults and easy access to prepared FAFH. Household size was significant at 1% level and has a direct relationship with household expenditure on consumption of FAFH. The total number of adults present in the household is also significant at 1% and has an inverse relationship with expenditure on consumption of FAFH. Also, the number of children under 6 years is statistically significant at 5% level of significant and it has an inverse relationship with the household expenditure. This could be as a result of specially attention given to young children. Based on the rapid growing trend of consumption of food away from home consumption, this study recommends that FAFH should be taken up by approved and trusted sources putting the health and safety of the consumers into consideration and government agencies concerned with food and health safety should ensure that food served at eateries and restaurants are safe for consumption.