Life Sciences

Agriculture is the keystone of the Indian economy contributing nearly 18 per cent to country’s GDP. Our country has achieved a fivefold increase in food grain production of 263.20 million tons in 2013-14 giving food securities for more than 1.27 billion Indian population. Still factors like insect pests, diseases, weeds, rodents etc., take a heavy toll in agriculture production. The losses though cannot be eliminated altogether, these can be reduced. Till now, chemical pesticides were increasingly relied upon to limit the production losses.

A field experiment was conducted to study the influence of different growth regulating compounds on chlorophyll, photosynthetic rate and yield in greengram during rabi 2009-10. Among the growth regulators growth promoting substance NAA (20 ppm) recorded significantly higher values for photosynthetic rate, chlorophyll content (SCMR) values were highest in chlormequat chloride 50% SL 375.0 g a.i ha-1, mepiquat chloride 5% AS (5%) and NAA (20ppm) during reproductive stage.

Bungoh catchment which is a segment of Sarawak Kiri River catchment areas is located in latitude between 1.184° to 1.296° N and in longitude between 110.106° to 110.242° E and 60 km from Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, Malaysia. The catchment covers an area of approximately 127 square kilometres. The altitude ranges from 20m to 1300 m a.s.l. The construction of dams at the catchment area leads to the ecosystem loss and ecosystem fragmentation.

Randomly selected 70 rural women engaged in backyard poultry farming from randomly selected one block of one purposively selected district of West Bengal were interviewed with the help o0f pre tested structured interview schedule during Jan-March,2011. The collected data were analysed statistically after proper compilation. The study revealed that most of rural women engaged in backyard poultry farming were middle aged, landless, middle class educated, married and were from nuclear family. They had no improved poultry birds.

Fifty four genotypes were characterized based on their morphological characters as per DUS guidelines of castor viz., stem colour, types of inter nodes on stem, plant branching pattern, petiole colour, lamina leaf colour, bloom, type of inflorescence, colour of stigma, capsule type, spike shape, spike compactness, seed colour. The germplasm has shown great extent of morphological variability for all the traits observed.

A pigeonpea fallow-maize crop rotation trial was carried out over a period of 4 seasons in western Kenya. The trial compared six high altitude long duration pigeonpea varieties i.e.  ICEAP 00020, ICEAP 00040, ICEAP 00048, ICEAP 00053, ICP 9145 and ICP 13076 and a medium duration variety i.e. ICP 13211 for productivity, post fallow maize crop yield and financial returns indicators. Long duration pigeonpea varieties take 140-180 days to mature while medium duration varieties take >200 days to mature.

This study investigated the factors affecting local and international marketing of rose varieties (romeo, ensemble, summer filed and orchestra)produced in Manic land Province of Zimbabwe during the 2008-2009 period. A case study using the WH FAEDA Flowers Farm as a producer and marketer of roses to the two markets.

Environmental Education is an important educational concern. This study deals with initiatives and efforts to protect environment and environmental Education for school students. Environmentalists have taken a very strong position after the United Nations Conference on Human Environment at Stockholm in 1972, which was a major event for those concerned with the quality of world’s environment. Environmental Education is a way of implementing the goals of environmental protection.

The Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have a very crucial role in a nation’s economic development. Swaziland’s high unemployment rate, with one third of its labour force unemployed in 2008, amongst them being the University of Swaziland (UNISWA) graduates from the Faculty of Agriculture (FOA), challenges its development. Thus, the production of SMEs has been identified as one coping strategy. This descriptive survey study’s main thrust was to determine challenges faced by Consumer Sciences (COS) graduates of UNISWA both during training, and after graduation.

Enormous sequence information is available in public databases as a result of sequencing of diverse crop genomes. It is important to use this genomic information for the identification and isolation of novel and superior alleles of seed quality. These important genes from different gene pools to suitably deploy for the development of improved seeds with better quality attribute. Allele mining is a promising approach to dissect naturally occurring allelic variation at candidate genes controlling key traits which has potential applications in seed improvement programs.