CAUSES OF DISPOSAL OF MURRAH BUFFALO FROM AN ORGANISED HERD

The present study comprised of 602 disposal records of adult Murrah buffaloes , spread over a period of 16 years from 1985 to 2000 at NDRI, Karnal, Haryana. Analysed data showed that the reproductive problems (38.62), low milk production (24.01) and udder problems (22.76) were the three major reasons of culling in adult Murrah buffaloes . The culling of cows due to involuntary reason (reproductive problems, udder problems and locomotive disorders) accounted for nearly 63.68 percent of total culling in Murrah buffaloes in the NDRI herd. The data revealed that maximum mortality occurred due to digestive problems accounting for 30.89 percent followed by cardio-vascular problems (26.02 percent), respiratory problems (21.14 percent), parasitic problems (8.13 percent) and uro-genital problems (5.69 percent). The results showed that there is a scope for further improvement in production and reproductive efficiency through better monitoring of reproduction and udder health status of the buffaloes. The high involuntary culling rate not only makes the dairy enterprises economically less profitable but also reduces the genetic improvement by lowering the selection differential for milk production

Higher yields and profits from new crop rotations permitting integration of mediculture with agriculture in the Indo-Gangetic plains

The results of a survey conducted in 100 villages of 7 districts located in Uttar Pradesh in the central Indo-Gangetic plains on the land cropping pattern and profits to the farmers per unit land and area are presented. It is shown that sugarcane is cultivated in about 19.5% of the land. Rice remains the principal kharif crop in the area, occupying about 76% of land. Conventional rice-wheat/Brassica/legume, rice-potato and rice-mint rotations benefitted farmers to the extent of roughly Rs 30,000 ha−1 year−1. Introduction of new rotations based upon newly available short duration Kosi variety of mint is permitting practice of rice-wheat/Brassica/legume-mint and rice-potato-mint rotations, bringing a profit of approximately Rs 61,000 ha−1 year−1 to the farmers of the area. Future prospects of integration of short duration medicinal and aromatic crops (mediculture) between food grain crops (agriculture) like the above, for the development of agriculture, industry and employment are discussed

Biomass and Carbon Stock Estimation in Woody Grass (\u3cem\u3eDendrocalamus strictus\u3c/em\u3e L.) in Doon Valley, India

Bamboos commonly kown as woody grass are one of the most important species particularly in Asia, where it is frequently considered as the ―timber of the poor‖ (Rao et al., 1985). With about 23 genera and 136 species, India is the second largest reservoir of bamboos, next only to China (SFR, 2013 and Nath et al., 2009). Bamboos occur extensively in the managed ecosystems of India—both as plantations (and in agroforestry (scattered clumps, hedgerows on farm boundaries etc. Dendrocalamus strictus L. is most commonly found bamboo in India. It is widely distributed in dry deciduous forests and grows rapidly in all climatic conditions and occupies about 53 % of total bamboo area in India. It grows better in the drier parts and on sandstone, granite and coarse grained soils with low moisture- retaining capacity and soils with pH range 5.5–7.6. It grows more than 8 feet in 6–8 months. The species is used widely for as raw material in paper mills and also for variety of purposes such as construction, agricultural implements, musical instruments, furniture etc. The species is also suitable for reclamations of degraded and ravine lands. The accurate assessment of biomass estimates of a forest is important for many applications (Brown, 2002; Chave et al., 2004; Arora et al., 2014; Verma et al., 2014). In recent years, the carbon cycle has become an important issue in the world and plants play a major role in carbon storage. Biomass estimation enables us to estimate the amount of carbon dioxide that can be sequestered from the atmosphere. However, most of the carbon and biomass studies focus on assessing the capability of trees viz., poplar, eucalyptus, shisham, chir teak, subabul etc. The studies related to biomass and carbon stock estimation in bamboos is limited. The present study examine specifically the above ground stand biomass, biomass structure and C storage in D. strictus

GastroVision: A Multi-class Endoscopy Image Dataset for Computer Aided Gastrointestinal Disease Detection

Integrating real-time artificial intelligence (AI) systems in clinical practices faces challenges such as scalability and acceptance. These challenges include data availability, biased outcomes, data quality, lack of transparency, and underperformance on unseen datasets from different distributions. The scarcity of large-scale, precisely labeled, and diverse datasets are the major challenge for clinical integration. This scarcity is also due to the legal restrictions and extensive manual efforts required for accurate annotations from clinicians. To address these challenges, we present \textit{GastroVision}, a multi-center open-access gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy dataset that includes different anatomical landmarks, pathological abnormalities, polyp removal cases and normal findings (a total of 27 classes) from the GI tract. The dataset comprises 8,000 images acquired from B{\ae}rum Hospital in Norway and Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden and was annotated and verified by experienced GI endoscopists. Furthermore, we validate the significance of our dataset with extensive benchmarking based on the popular deep learning based baseline models. We believe our dataset can facilitate the development of AI-based algorithms for GI disease detection and classification. Our dataset is available at \url{https://osf.io/84e7f/}

Surveillance for selected tobacco-use behaviors—United States, 1900-1994

Problem/Condition: Surveillance of tobacco use is an essential component of any tobacco-control program. The information gathered can be used to guide research initiatives, intervention programs, and policy decisions. Reporting Periods: This report covers the period 1900–1994 for per capita cigarette consumption; 1965–1991 for trends in cigarette smoking prevalence and cessation; 1974–1991 for trends in the number of cigarettes smoked daily by current smokers; 1987–1991 for recent patterns of tobacco use; 1970, 1987, and 1991 for trends in cigar/pipe smoking and snuff/chewing tobacco use; 1984–1992 for trends in state-specific prevalences of regular cigarette smoking; 1987–1992 for state-specific estimates of smokeless-tobacco use; and 1976–1993 for trends in cigarette smoking among U.S. high school seniors. Description of Systems: Estimates of cigarette consumption are reported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which uses data from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Tobacco Institute, and other sources. The National Health Interview Survey uses household interviews to provide nationally representative estimates (for the civilian, noninstitutionalized population) of cigarette smoking and other behaviors related to tobacco use. The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System uses telephone surveys of civilian, noninstitutionalized adults (³18 years of age) to provide state-specific estimates of current cigarette smoking and use of smokeless tobacco. The University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research uses school-based, self-administered questionnaires to gather data on cigarette smoking from a representative sample of U.S. high school seniors. Results: During the period 1900–1963, per capita cigarette consumption increased; after 1964, consumption declined. During the years 1965–1991, current cigarette smoking prevalence among persons ages ³18 years declined overall and in every sociodemographic category examined. Decrease in current smoking prevalence was slow in some groups (e.g., among persons with fewer years of formal education). Both the prevalence of never smoking and the prevalence of cessation increased from 1965 through 1991. The prevalence of current cigarette smoking, any tobacco smoking, and any tobacco use was highest among American Indians/Alaska Natives and non-Hispanic blacks and lowest among Asians/Pacific Islanders. The prevalence of cigar smoking and pipe smoking has declined substantially since 1970. The prevalence of smokeless-tobacco use among white males ages 18–34 years was higher in 1987 and 1991 than in 1970; among persons ³45 years of age, the use of smokeless tobacco was more common among blacks than whites in 1970 and 1987. Cigarette smoking prevalence has decreased in most states. The prevalence of smokeless tobacco use was especially high among men in West Virginia, Montana, and several southern states. From 1984–1993, prevalence of cigarette smoking remained constant among U.S. high school seniors. However, prevalence increased slightly for male seniors and white seniors, decreased slightly for female high school seniors, and decreased sharply for black high school seniors. Interpretation: With the exceptions of increases in cigarette smoking among white and male high school seniors and in the use of smokeless tobacco among white males ages 18–34 years, reductions in tobacco use occurred in every subgroup examined. This decrease must continue if the national health objectives for the year 2000 are to be reached. Actions Taken: Surveillance of tobacco use is ongoing. Effective interventions that discourage initiation and encourage cessation are being disseminated throughout the United States

Thermoneutrality alters gastrointestinal antigen passage patterning and predisposes to oral antigen sensitization in mice

Food allergy is an emerging epidemic, and the underlying mechanisms are not well defined partly due to the lack of robust adjuvant free experimental models of dietary antigen sensitization. As housing mice at thermoneutrality (Tn) - the temperature of metabolic homeostasis (26-30°C) - has been shown to improve modeling various human diseases involved in inflammation, we tested the impact of Tn housing on an experimental model of food sensitization. Here we demonstrate that WT BALB/c mice housed under standard temperature (18-20°C, Ts) conditions translocated the luminal antigens in the small intestine (SI) across the epitheliu

Effect of planting time and density on plant growth, seed yield and quality attributes in onion (Allium cepa) cv. Pusa Riddhi

The present experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of planting time and density on plant growth, seed yield and quality attributes in onion (Allium cepa L.) cv. Pusa Riddhi at SPU, IARI, New Delhi during rabi 2013-14 and 2014-15. The experiment consists of three different planting dates, i.e. 15 October (T1), 25 October (T2) and 5 November (T3) with three spacings, viz. 60×10 cm (S1) 60×20 cm (S2) 60×30 cm (S3). The experimental results revealed that the date of planting and plant spacing had significant influence on growth attributes, flowering, yield and quality characters. The planting on 15 October (T1) showed significant higher, seed scape height (101.4 cm), umbel diameter (6.54 cm), productive umbellates/umbel (414.73), seed setting (83.69%), seed yield/plant (8.71 g) and yield/ ha (6.86 q), germination (%) (88.43), seedling length (9.48 cm), seedling dry weight (1.9 mg) and vigour index-I and II (8.33.32 and 167.08) than 25 October and 5 November planting. The plant spacing 60×30cm (S3) showed higher number of leaves/plant (40.89) seed scape height (102.26 cm), scape diameter (1.88 cm), total scapes/plant (11.72), umbel diameter (6.58 cm), productive scapes/plant (8.35), umbellates/umbel (503.52), productive umbellates/umbel (419.4), yield/umbel (3.48 g), seed yield/plant (12.43 g), seed yield/ha (6.22 q), 1000 seed weight (3.01 g), germination (%) (89.76) and seed vigour-I and II (918.56 and 172.96) than closer spacing. The incidence of disease, disease severity index and scape lodging (%) were significantly lower in 15 October (T1) and 60×30 (S3)

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF PALMAROSA CULTIVATION IN INDIA

ABSTRACT Cymbopogon martinii, commonly known as palmarosa, is an essential oil-bearing crop cultivated by the farmers for production of oil used in perfumery, cosmetics and flavour industries. The study on the economics of palmarosa cultivation has shown that the major portion of operational cost was shared by human labour, distillation charges and preparation of nursery. Total variable cost was found to be 47926 per hectare per year. The gross returns were found to be 124000 per hectare e per year. The net returns over variable cost were 76074 per hectare. The benefit-cost ratio was found to be 2.59 indicating a higher profit to the farmers. The independent variables like human labour, planting material and distillation charges were positive indicating significant impact on the returns from the crop. There is need for effective market intelligence system to ensure remunerative price of the produce to the farmers

Towards Enriching Genomic Resources in Legumes

Food legumes, mainly comprising dry beans, dry peas, soybean, chickpea, pigeonpea, groundnut, greengram, blackgram, cowpea, lentil and lathyrus, have considerable area under cultivation globally and these are important constituents of cereal-based vegetarian diets. Keeping in view their tremendous importance for diversification and intensification of contemporary agriculture, systematic efforts towards their genetic improvement have been undertaken with classical breeding tools, lately complemented by the use of genomic tools. These genomic tools provide comprehensive information on genes involved in biochemical pathways leading upto nutritional compounds and can be used to understand the genetics of traits of interest and consequently, helping in marker assisted breeding. During the last two decades powerful genetic and genomic tools such as establishment of genetic and physical maps, expressed sequence tags, bioinformatic tools, genome-wide sequence data, genomic and metabolomic platforms, etc. have been developed for many legume species. These efforts have led to development of large scale molecular markers, identification of various marker trait associations, construction of genetic and linkage maps, expressed sequence tags database, partial or whole genome sequences, physical and molecular maps, DNA chips and bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) libraries. After the genome sequencing of three model species, Medicago, Lotus and Glycine, draft genome sequences have recently been made available in agronomically important food legumes, pigeonpea and chickpea while similar efforts are underway in groundnut and greengram. The new generation sequencing (NGS) and genotyping platforms such as 454/FLX sequencing and Illumina GoldenGate/Solexa have revolutionized plant genomic research as these generate millions of ESTs per run. With the increased amount of genomic resources, there are now tremendous opportunities to integrate these with the genetic resources for their widespread use in routine legume improvement programmes by integrating them with conventional breeding tools. As a result, the genomics assisted breeding (GAB) can now be successfully used in legume improvement and development of improved genotypes having improved agronomic and quality traits and resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. This chapter discusses the developments made in development of legume genomics and their role in overall improvement of food legumes