Agriculture

The objective of this study was to determine the internal and external quality characteristics of quail eggs and the effect of egg weight and body size on these traits. For this investigation, one hundred thirty-two eggs were obtained from 120 Japanese quails grown on a deep litter system. Egg Weight (EW), Egg Length (EL), Egg Width (EWT), Yolk Height (YH), Yolk Diameter (YD), Albumen Length (AL), Albumen Height (AH), Yolk Weight (YW), Shell Weight (SW), Shell Thickness (ST), and Albumen Diameter (AD) were all measured, and Egg Surface Area (ESA), Unit Surface Shell Weight (USW), Egg Index (EI), Shell Ratio (SR). According to the findings, age significantly affected egg weight, body weight, yolk diameter, shell weight, egg surface area, and unit surface shell weight (P<0.05). However, all other parameters were not affected by age (P>0.05). Furthermore, increasing egg weight had a negative effect on egg shape index and egg yolk ratio. Most of the internal egg quality traits studied were negatively affected by increasing the eggshell ratio.

The term “producer” rather than “farmer” because it covers all aspects of agricultural production, including livestock and fisheries, and the processing of agricultural products on-farm or in the rural areas (such as the women’s cottage industries). The producer organizations (POs) considered are formal rural organizations whose members organized themselves with the objective of improving farm income through improved production, marketing, and local processing activities. POs deal with: policies on issues such as pricing and export and import of agricultural products; improvement of agricultural production practices; access to inputs and services, including agricultural credit; marketing of agricultural production; and local processing of agricultural production and its marketing. Collectivization of producers, especially small and marginal farmers, into producer organizations has emerged as one of the most effective pathways to address the many challenges of agriculture but most importantly, improved access to investments, technology and inputs and markets. Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture, Govt. of India has identified farmer producer organization registered under the special provisions of the Companies Act, 1956 as the most appropriate institutional form around which to mobilize farmers and build their capacity to collectively leverage their production and marketing strength. It has been argued that rural producer organizations (RPOs) are an effective tool for solving problems in rural areas and promoting agricultural development. The empirical evidence of the effectiveness of POs on serving their members is scarce at best.

The pollinating of oil palm is cross pollination. The important insect that play an important role is Elaeidobius kamerunicus (EK). The superior DP hybrid with high sex ratio in young plants resulted in a lack of pollen.The Hatch and Carry technique is used to increase EK populations. This research aimed to determine the effectiveness of EK with Hatch and Carry technique on the fruit set level. The EK population increased the fruit set from 69% to 80%; Hatch and Carry techniques are effective on plantations dominated with young plant, and this technique can increase productivity by 5 - 16%

In this study, various Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) were developed to determine the economics indices for seed and grain corn production in Ardabil province, Iran. For this purpose, the data was collected by a face-to-face interview method from 144 corn farms during 2011 and analyzed. The results indicated that total energy input for seed and grain corn productions was about 45162.77 and 35198.11, respectively. The developed ANN was a multilayer perceptron (MLP) with six neurons in the input layer (human labor, machinery, diesel fuel, chemical fertilizer, chemicals, seed), one, two and three hidden layer(s) of various numbers of neurons and four neuron (BCR, P, TR, NR) in the output layer. The results of ANNs analyze showed that the best MLP network models for predicting economic indices in seed and grain corn production had (6-6-10-4) and (6-4-8-4) topologies, respectively. For these topologies, MSE, MAE and R2 calculated. The ANN approach appears to be a suitable method for modeling output energy, fuel consumption, CO2 emission, yield, and energy consumption.

Drip irrigation systems have a preference in selecting a suitable irrigation method in arid and semi-arid regions because of its high potential in uniform applying water in through a field. A proper management of drip irrigation system is, to some extent, dependent upon accurate understanding of wetting patterns distributions in soil under different combinations of soil type and emitter discharge rate. Using statistical distribution to estimate wetting front pattern in drip irrigation systems can improve their performance in different conditions. In this paper, the wetting area and water distribution on light, medium and heavy texture homogeneous soils in subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) and surface irrigation (DI) were evaluated. Experimental tests were carried out in a plexiglass lysimeter container with transparent walls. Emitters were buried at 15, 30 and 45 cm depths and discharge rates of 2.4, 4 and 6 L/h were applied. In this research, data of water front was divided into tree hourly periodic lengths of 2, 4 and 6. Then, with analysis of data in time series according to HYFA software output and goodness fit of Relative Residual Square Mean, suitable frequency distribution function for different conditions was evaluated. Based on relative frequency, the best fitted distribution for DI and SDI was found to be Normal and Pearson type III distribution (Moment method) and Normal distribution (maximum likelihood method).

Studies on orange production in Mazandaran province are necessary due to its potential for production and large cultivation area. In this study energy input-output, economic analysis and econometric modeling of energy input for orange production in Sari region of Iran were carried out. From a total of 86 farmers considered for the analysis, the total input and output energy were 54.2 and 59.2 GJ ha-1, respectively. Diesel fuel, fertilizer and water had the highest energy values per hectare, respectively. Results showed that the overall energy ratio (Energy use efficiency) was calculated as 1.09. The relationships between various energy sources and yield were found using Cobb-Douglas production function. Econometric models showed that among all energy sources chemical fertilizer, farmyard manure and water for irrigation had the most significant impact on orange yield. Additionally, economic analysis was carried out with results showing that the bene?t to cost ratio and net return for orange production were 10.6 and 16420.4 $ h-1, respectively.

The study examined the pattern of farmers land use on crop diversification in Ido Local Government Area of Oyo State. Multistage sampling technique was used to sample eighty (80) crop famers in the study area, with the aid of a well structured questionnaire and analysed using descriptive percentage, mean, frequency count and inferential statistic. The result showed that 73.8% of the crop farmers were male with mean age of 49.8 years, 83.7% were married with mean family size of 8 persons, and 43.8% of the farmers had one form of formal education, 60% used hired labour for their farm operation with minimum labour cost of N 1000- N 10000 on daily basis. 67.5% source their farm land through hired/rent and 61.2% source their capital through personal saving, 62.5% of them acquired information through radio and television. 93.7% of the farmer cultivated farm size less than 5 hectare with mean farming experience of 16.01years, 45% practice four cropping combination, which showed the extend of crop diversification among farmer in the study area. It was also revealed that 58.7% realize income of N 80,000- N 200,000, from their farm output per season, 75% of the crop farmer used inorganic fertilizer. The major dominant of crop in the area was cassava (91.3%), maize (86.3%) and vegetables (48.8%) different species, which may be inter/mixed cropping. The major land management practices adopted by the farmer in the study area were, manual method of land clearing (95%), Inorganic fertilizer (67.5%), improve varieties of crop specie(65%), crop rotation (61.2%) and cover cropping( 21.3%), while 72% apply chemical for weeding. The major problem of farmer on the land use on crop diversification, are basically land tenure, pest infestation among others. It was therefore concluded that there should be good land tenure system, farmer should be encouraged to adopt organic input method of farming, effort should be made by extension workers and research institute to the need of orientating and organizing organic farming system training program in other to improve soil fertility through combination of leguminous based cropping system should be encouraged in the study area.

The paper reviews pollination studies in oil palm in West Africa, the Far East and South and Central America. The main types of pollination in the oil palm, anemophily and entomophily, and other forms of pollination are discussed. The floral characters of the oil palm that promote anemophily and entomophily are: abundant smooth dry pollen grains, enlarged stigmatic surfaces, reduced perianth, coloured perianth and a raised female inflorescence. The critical role played by insects and the resulting increases in yield of fresh fruit bunches (ffb) and oil following introductions of pollinator insects into the plantations in the Far East and Central and South America are mentioned. The introduction of insect pollinators into areas in the Far East with poor fruit set rates led to the cessation of assisted pollination and increased profitability. The introduction of the insect pollinators led to as much as 36 – 80 % improvement in fruit set, a 12 % increase in fruit-to-bunch ratio and a 28 – 54 % increase in mean bunch weight. The oil-to-bunch ratio increased by 9 % and a 43 % improvement recorded in the kernel-to-bunch ratio. Insects belonging to the Elaeidobius spp. (Coleoptera: Curculiondae; Derelominae) are the main insects involved in pollination of the oil palm. Other insects listed are the Prosoestus spp., Microporium spp. (Coleoptera: Nitidilidae) and Atheta spp. (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae). Mystrops spp. are of economic importance in South and Central America. The insects generally carry pollen on their hairy bodies and wings. The bigger and more hairy insects are more efficient pollinators and contribute to adequate fruit set and increased yield. Pollinator insect populations may be conserved through the selective use of insecticides, the proper timing of application, and the mode of application to achieve sustainable production.

Water quality parameters from three sampling stations in Ikpa River, Nigeria were investigated for a period of 12 calendar months from March 2009 to February 2010. ANOVA result showed that all the parameters were significantly different (P<0.05) except transparency and pH. Sampling station and month effect on the parameters showed significance by LSD means separation in all parameters (P<0.05) except air temperature, transparency and pH, thus, some were highly significant while others were significant. pH values in all the stations remained the same indicating uniformity from the upstream to downstream. PC 1 and 2 axes in the combined stations indicated clusters of PO4-P, NO3-N and SO42- which showed that they have high positive correlations with each other, thus, there is inferred eutrophication and subsequent pollution. AT and WT showed high positive correlation in clustering together in all the stations indicated the effect of climate change which is a global environmental menace due to the increased of the earth’s surface. High positive correlation of FCO2 and BOD indicated low dissolved oxygen which endangers the lives of aquatic fauna. The clustering of TDS and transparency together was an indication of high ionic constituents of the water, thus, inferring nitrification. CCA showed effect of environmental factors on phytoplankton species and the main source of pollution to be from organic materials. Seasonal variability showed higher factor loadings during the dry season than during the wet season (P<0.05). Temporal variableness had highest factor loadings occurring in February (P<0.05). The total number of families, genera and species of phytoplankton sampled were 7, 67 and 106 respectively.

Pistachio is one of the most important export and strategic agricultural product in the word and comprehensive study on its agro-ecological requirements can lead to find out the suitable areas for producing pistachio as well as addressing the best management practices to achieve the sustainability. This paper tries to review agro-ecological requirements (climate, soil and site) for pistachio after describing the role and the limitation levels of the climatic, landscape and soil properties that influencing on the yield and quality of the pistachio trees and their nuts, respectively.