Ethnobotanical Exploration of Malkangiri District of Orissa, India

The association of man with the neighborhood flora starts with human civilization. Besides food, feed clothes and shelter, plants are important source of drugs. These plants or its parts therefore used either directly or after processing by the native people against various diseases, disorders and ailments. A survey was conducted on the tribal district of Malkangiri of Orissa to identify and record various ethno medicinally important plants and their medicinal uses. In the present investigation there are 134 species of plants belong to 69 families and 128 genera are recorded and used in various ailments by different tribes of Malkangiri district of Orissa

Development and Ergonomic Evaluation of Manually Operated Weeder for Dry Land Crops

A manually operated weeder for dry land crops was developed and evaluated to find its performance. It was compared with other available weeders namely wheel finger weeder, wheel hoe and conventional weeding by using trench hoe for groundnut crop at four levels of soil moisture content of 13.52, 11.63, 9.52 and 8.04 per cent (db). It was found that the heart rate, oxygen consumption rate and energy consumption rate increases with decrease in soil moisture content for all the treatments. The highest performance index of 3689.74 was obtained with developed weeder at 11.63 per cent moisture content. Lowest plant damage (2.46 to 7.96%) and lower energy consumption rate (8.34 to 40.05 kJ/min) with highest performance index (678.66 to 3689.74) of developed weeder at different soil moisture content proved its superiority over other weeders. Soil moisture of 11.63 per cent was found to be optimum for weeding in groundnut crop and the cost of operation of developed weeder at this soil moisture content was found to be Rupees 244.00 as against Rupees 2450.00 per hectare in conventional method of weeding by using trench hoe

Performance of summer sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) hybrids under different nutrient management practices in coastal Odisha

The field experiment was conducted at Department of Agronomy, College of Agriculture, OUAT, Bhubaneswar during summer 2014 to find out appropriate hybrids and nutrient management practices for summer sunflower. Application of recommended dose of Fertiliser(RDF) i.e. 60-80- 60 kg N, P2O5-K2O ha -1 + ZnSO4 @ 25 kg ha -1 recorded the maximum capitulum diameter (15.60cm), seed yield (2.17 t ha -1 ), stover yield (4.88 t ha -1 ) and oil yield (0.91 t ha -1 ), while application of RDF + Boron@ 1 kg ha-1 recorded the highest number of total seed (970) and filled seed per capitulum (890) with the lowest unfilled seed (80) and sterility percentage (9.0%). The hybrid ‘Super-48’ recorded the highest seed and oil yield of 2.17 and 0.91 t ha -1 , respectively, at recommended dose of fertiliser + ZnSO4 @ 25 kg ha -1 . Experiment was conducted in evaluating the new hybrids in addition to evaluate the response of variety to different nutrient management practices

Assessment of inter-population genetic diversity and preliminary evaluation of suitable clones of teak (Tectona grandis Linn. F.)

Productivity, uniformity and sustainability are the three important characters of the clonally propagated plants. With the increased use of clonal technology, the scarcity of wood products evidently decreased which has also led to reduced pressure on natural forests and ecosystem. However, the success of clonal technology rests on wise selection and deployment of suitable clones by studying the inter-population genetic diversity. The present study was conducted in a clonal seed orchard (CSO) of teak (Tectona grandis Linn. F.) comprising of 13 different clones to estimate the inter-clonal variation in terms of growth performance and genetic variability at 32 and 33 years of age. Clone ORANP2 exhibited maximum DBH (26.61cm), height (23.69 m), and stem volume (235.40 m3ha-1) with MAI of 7.133 m3ha-1year-1. The highest CAI of DBH (1.08 cm) and volume (18.558m3/ha) was reported in ORANP5 and ORANR3, respectively. The study found that clone ORANP2 is a superior genotype and thus can be recommended for vegetative multiplication and ex-situ mass planting in reforestation programmes. Both heritability and genetic advance values were low for all the plant traits studied (DBH, height and stem volume) indicating that these traits are of less use for a tree breeder for furthering the selection and breeding process on teak or other tropical hardwood species across globe