Agriculture

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.

The study assessed the level of gender involvement in household farming decisions and identified constraints to women involvement in household farming decisions in Lafia Local Government Area, North-central Nigeria. Data were collected through structured questionnaire administered on sixty (60) farming households randomly selected for the study. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and factor analysis. The results showed that men dominated (with involvement rate of 79% on grand average) all aspects of household farming decisions (such as selection of farm enterprise, procurement of farm inputs, allocation of farm inputs, selling and storage of excess farm produce) except for household decisions concerning processing and consumption of farm produce dominated (73.5% on grand average) by females members of farm households. Poor personal linkages to socio-economic institutions, land holding constraint, women farming skill, household violence, traditional and cultural belief were constraints to women involvement in household farming decisions. It is recommended that extension activities be expanded to include sensitizing male household heads on need to involve their women in the household farming decisions for greater productivity and to enhance household food security.

Wastewater irrigation can pose a variety of potential health risks and also excessive and often imbalanced addition of nutrients to the soil to affect crop production. Thus, its use in agriculture without adequate safeguards has been noted to have serious drawbacks for human health and the environment. This study assessed micro nutrient concentration in wastewater used for peri-urban vegetable crop production in the Tamale Metropolis of Ghana. Aside Fe which was insignificant in both seasons all the others recorded a significant difference in the two seasons. Al, Fe, Mn and Zn on the average recorded higher concentration values in the wet season than the dry season whilst Cu recorded a higher concentration in the dry season than the wet season. Concentrations of most of the micro nutrients were lower than the WHO (2006) recommended standards except Mn which had concentration levels exceeding the recommended standard in the wet season only.

This study based on physical and microbial analyses of wastewater samples collected from Nullah Lai, Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Total viable count was done on sterilized media by spread plate technique. In physical analyses of wastewater, it was found that pH was neutral while EC and turbidity of the wastewater samples were greater than the WHO standards for the irrigation purpose. The total viable counts for all the wastewater samples exceeded the standard limit of 1.0x 102 cfu/ml. Three bacterial and four fungal species were detected from the wastewater samples. Preliminary information about microbial diversity in wastewater was attained through this work that is useful in future for wastewater treatment in reference to bioremediation.