Agriculture

The purpose of conservation tillage is to reduce the intensity of tillage operations and increase the amount of crop residue on soil surface. One of the characteristics of soil in arid and semi-arid areas is the lack of organic matter. Crop residue management is one of the soil fertility and improvement methods that is achieved by conservation tillage. Compared to residue burning, maintaining crop residue on or near the soil surface under no-tillage and minimum tillage methods will improve the organic carbon, Soil structure and activity of micro-organisms. Soil organic matter in a temperate and humid area increased by 16% and in a temperate and dry area increased by 10% than conventional tillage systems.

Food security is a major global concern since food is the most basic human need and access to food is a fundamental human right. The right to food is contained in the universal declaration of human rights that was adopted in 1948 by the general assembly and reaffirmed by the World Food Summit and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN in 1996. To show their solidarity over poverty and hunger issues, nations under the umbrella of the United Nation (UN) targets to halve by the year 2015 the proportion of people who are hungry. Tackling food insecurity problem on a global level poses critical dynamic challenges. Every country has its own individual dimensions adding to the overall food crisis in farming areas. Due to unprecedented subsidies given to farmers in terms of seeds and fertilizers, they are easily enticed to use larger portion of their land for cultivation of food. Consequently, farmers have to either spend more on buying food or reduce their food consumption, which subject their families to malnourishment and starvation. In other words, low level of investment practiced by poor small scale farmers do not attract economies of scales but makes them remain in constant debts and this incapacitates households’ ability to afford adequate food. Farmers being trapped in a debt cycle provide them no option but to keep cultivating this crop irrespective of the long-term, veiled hazardous consequences and questionable economic gains. The power of technological solutions to solve poverty problems currently witnessed in Kenya is installed by the myriad of institutional and supply policies. Moreover, with a better policy environment, investment in rural infrastructure and transport network can bring down input costs considerably by reducing one of the major supply constraints to adoption. Considerable adaptive research, stronger and decentralized research-extension farmer linkage is required to increase the speed with which farmers apply the viable technologies. The best judges of agricultural technology are the end users-the farmers and involving them in technology use is critical to the success of research investment programs for increased sustainable production to alleviate the persistent food insecurity in Kenya.

Kandhamal district situated in central part of Orissa receives an annual rainfall of 1396mm and this region is highly prone to soil and runoff loss due to heavy rainfall during kharif. A trial was conducted during 2001-04 to study the effect of conservation trenches on plantation crop. This trial was conducted on farmers field of Sudreju village of Kandhamal district under National Agricultural Technology Project(NATP, RRPS-7) with the following objectives.1.To conserve moisture for establishment of plantation crop. 2.To reduce erosion from upstream area.3 To increase production of timber, fruit species, fuel wood and fodder .The following treatments were tried.1.No treatment.2.Continuous V-ditches at 10m horizontal interval.3 Continuous V-ditches at 20m horizontal interval.4.V-ditches staggered at 5m horizontal interval. 5 V-ditches staggered at 10m horizontal interval. Mango varieties Pusa Amrapalli was tried during kharif and during, rabi Black gram (PU-30) was tried in between mango rows. It is observed that in, cont. contour V-ditch at 10m interval rate of growth was 2.06 cm/month in case of Amrapalli , which is 46 %higher compared to control. The grain yield of niger, black gram & mustard are 33.4%, 23.5 % &26.6 % higher than control respectively. Though the cost of construction is little high it is recommended to practice contour V-ditch at 10m intervals, to conserve soil and moisture and to get more grain yield in degraded watershed of Kandhamal district

Vermicompost has been promoted as a viable alternative container media component for the horticulture industry. The purpose of this research was to investigate the use of vermicompost at different points in the production cycle of eucalyptus seedlings. The incorporation of vermicompost of city refuse origin into germination media up to 20% v/v enhanced shoot and root weight, leaf area, and shoot:root ratios of seedlings; however amendment with vermicompost had little influence on seed germination. Moreover there was no effect on the germination of seed of any species. When seedlings of eucalyptus were transplanted into 6-cell packs there was greater plant growth in media amended with vermicompost compared to the control media, and the greatest growth when vermicompost was amended into both the germination and transplant media. This effect was increased when seedlings in the transplant media were irrigated with water containing fertilizer.

Surveying number entering a particular stage of a stage-structured population (e.g. arthropods) using field sampling data has been subject of many studies in last 60 years. Stage-frequency data consist of count of individuals in different development stages in samples taken from a population over a period of time. Several methods are then available for deriving estimates of stage-specific survival rates and other population parameters that are of interest to the ecologists that Manly (1990) listed 23 methods. The application of some of these methods is limited by their computational difficulty and others are limited by restrictive assumption that they make. Each method has advantages and disadvantages which arise from its assumptions. The first method in this field may be offered by Richards and Waloff (1954). Richards et al (1961), Dempster (1961), and Southwood and Jepson(1962) suggested further methods and the KNM method proposed by Kiritani & Nakasuji (1967) and extended by Manly (1974). There is therefore something of a problem for the data analyst to decide what is the best for a particular set of data. The purpose of this note is presenting a review of some important and applicable methods to show differences among these. So, it is recommend that any method be used with respect to the required information and parameters.

In this study the temporal variations in field soil respiration were investigated over a two year period, together with laboratory soil respiration rates in a park grassland at University of Essex, UK. Field soil respiration was measured with portable environmental gas monitor, while laboratory soil respiration was by incubation and titrimetric methods. Field soil respiration varied over time of day, sites and seasons, with the summer months recording the highest respiratory activity (127.8 and 69.8 mmol m-2 h-1 over two years respectively) while the winter months recorded the lowest field soil respiration rates (27.2 and 29.8 mmol m-2 h-1 for the same periods respectively). Soil temperature and water filled pore spaces (WFPS) also varied seasonally with highest temperature and lowest WFPS recorded in the summer months. Field soil respiration was dependent on either soil temperature or WFPS in first year only. A multiple regression analysis also recorded a significant relation between field soil respiration, temperature and WFPS (R2 multiple = 0.5, FSR = 45.6 + 10.5T + 86.9 WFPS mmol CO2 m-2 h-1) for the two years. Laboratory measurements are vital for explaining the factors that influence C-fluxes in the field.

India is the agriculture based country. Agricultural sector is playing vital role in Indian economy. Our ancient people completely depended on the agricultural harvesting. This paper is a basic implementation to bring Indian agricultural system to the world class standards. Paper is used to find the exact field condition. Irrigation by help of freshwater resources in agricultural areas has a crucial importance. Because of highly increasing demand for freshwater, optimal usage of water resources has been provided with greater extent by automation technology and its apparatus such as drip irrigation, sensors and remote control. Our paper aim is to control the wastage of water in the field by using the drip irrigation and also to provide exact controlling of field by atomizing the agricultural environment by using the components and building the necessary hardware. The humidity and temperature of plants are precisely monitored and controlled. By using drip irrigation the water will be maintained at the constant level i.e. the water will reach the roots by going drop by drop. Irrigation system controls valves by using automated controller to turn ON & OFF. This allows the farmer to apply the right amount of water at the right time, regardless of the availability of the labor to turn valves or motor ON & OFF. This reduces runoff over watering saturated soils avoid irrigating at the wrong time of the day. It improves crop performances and help in time saving in all the aspects. In this paper an ARM LPC2148 Microcontroller based drip irrigation mechanism is proposed, which is a real time feedback control system for monitoring and controlling all the activities of drip irrigation system more efficiently. GSM is used to inform the user about the exact field condition. The information is given on user request in form of SMS. Eg. GSM modem can be controlled by standard set of AT (Attention) commands. These commands can be used to control majority of the functions of GSM modem. GSM serves as an important part as it is responsible for controlling the irrigation on field and sends them to the receiver through coded signals. GSM operates through SMS’s and is the link between ARM processor and centralized unit. The drip method of irrigation has been found to have a significant impact on resources saving, cost of cultivation, yield of crops and farm profitability.

The papaya seed oil was extracted by solvent extraction method. The characteristic of seed oil was studied. Percent seed oil was recorded 30.1 and chemical composition of papaya seed was found to be protein (28.1%), Ash (8.2%), Crude fiber (19.1%) and total carbohydrate (25.6%).The papaya seed oil consists of iodine value (65.5), saponification value (155.5), unsaponifiable matter (1.37%) and free fatty acid (0.32%).The major fatty acid of papaya seed oil were oleic acid(72.5%) followed by palmitic acid (13.5%) and stearic acid (4.5%). Thus it can be concluded that the seed can be utilized for extraction of oil which has various health benefits with respect to essential fatty acids.

The study specifically described the socio-economic status of the people involved in the production, distribution and consumption of convenience foods in Lafia urban of Nasarawa state. It identified the factors that influence the entry into convenience food enterprise, factors necessitating the demand and supply of the products and examined the costs and returns of three convenience foods. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics, inferential statistics (multiple regression analysis), the four points likert scale and the enterprise gross margin. The major findings indicated that female producers of convenience foods were more than male producers, the multiple regression result on the effects of socio-economic characteristics of consumers on the amount of money spent on consumer foods revealed that R2 value is 0.697. This implied that 67.7% of the total variation in output (Y) is explained by the combined influences of the independent variables in the model. The gross margin enterprise revealed that the sale of convenience foods in Lafia metropolis is profitable. The study concluded by advocating for provision of credit facilities amongst others to producers and distributors of convenience foods with limited income.

Vetiver grass effectiveness for phytoremediation has received wide publicity. Therefore, a pot experiment was conducted to compare metal tolerance and metal uptake of two vetiver grass varieties; Vetiveria zizanioides (VZ) and Vetiveria nigritana (VN) on soil collected from an abandoned Exide battery site. A pot experiment with treatments of different levels of pollutant; 100% top soil, 100% polluted soil, 75% top soil + 25% polluted soil, 25% topsoil + 75% polluted soil and 50% topsoil + 50% polluted soil.Each treatment consists of a pot filled with 5kg of the dumpsite soil and top soil mixture. These were planted with two vetiver grass varieties and were replicated three times. The vetiver grass was carefully uprooted twelve weeks after planting and was analyzed for lead concentration. Data collected were subjected to analysis of variance using SAS 2.0 and the means were separated using Least Significance Difference. The results showed thatVZ had a better growth performance thanVN. Number of tillers and root length were significantly higherfor VZ (7.9, 36.8 cm) than VN (4.0, 23.3 cm), respectively. However, VN had higher uptake of lead (11017mgkg? ?) than VZ (9405 mgkg-1). In summary, both varieties may be well suited for phytoremediation in tropical lead mine areas, but VN could tolerate higher lead concentration than VZ.