Technology Factors Influencing the Adoption of Shrimp Farming

Commercial shrimp Culture has emerged as one of the most important sectors of the aquaculture industry in India: The cultured shrimps in the coimtry alone contribute to 50 per cent of the total shrimp exports from India. Much of this phenomenal successs has been attributed to the production and dissemination of a host of improved technologies starting from pond preparation till harvest of the cultured shrimps. The existing knowledge structure of the farmers is further enhanced when they are exposed to more scientific farming technologies containing more attributes of the innovation which influence their adoption process. It is frequently asserted that as farrriers gain in experience or obtain more accurate and scientific knowledge, their capacity to manage shrimp ponds in a more sustainable way is enhanced. (Saengnore and Lebel, 2002). The technology adopted ranges from traditional to improved, traditional within the coastal regulation zone and extensive shrimp farming outside the coastal regulation zone (Anon. 2002)

Factors influencing the extent of adoption of shrimp culture technologies

Fisheries sector occupying a unique status in India as it provides employment, food and nutritional security and foreign exchange. Shrimp farming is an integral activity of the fisheries sector. Shrimp culture on commercial scale begun very recently in India. Among the various factors which determines the adoption of shrimp farming governmental policies and market in wake of post WTO era is most important. Some of the environmental issues are also associated with the shrimp farming. So the present study is an attempt to study the policies responsible for adoption of shrimp culture in the Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh. The study showed that the legal and environmental policies influenced the adoption of shrimp culture technologies

Diffusion of scientific shrimp farming through various stages of the adoption period

Commercial shrimp culture has become to the mainstay of the coastal economy of India. The present study was undertaken among 120 shrimp farmers from the two predominant shrimp farming districts of the country. The aim of the study was to find out the various stages of diffusion of scientific shrimp farming through various stages of the adoption from 1997-2003, as well as to study the present adoption behavior of the shrimp farmers. Using a structured interview schedule each of the respondent was inter-viewed to know his stage of adoption of scientific shrimp farming in each of the year ranging from 1997 to 2003. The number of respondents in each stage of adoption in each of these years was worked out and ex-pressed as percentages. The present adoption behaviour of the shrimp farmers was studied using the adop-tion quotient formula. The study revealed that the symbolic adoption and use adoption was high in the years 2002 and 2003 when more of the critical technologies of health and water management were devel-oped and transferred to the target population. Practice wise adoption of the technologies revealed that the adoption behaviour was high in harvesting, pond bottom conditioning, pond bottom sterilization, liming of pond and feed management

On understanding the applicability of Mohr-Coulomb failure hypothesis for composite materials using UnitCells©

The applicability of Mohr-Coulomb (M-C) failure hypothesis for anisotropic composite materials is re-examined in this paper. Mohr-Coulomb failure theory has been widely referred to in the literature to study the failure of unidirectional (UD) fibre reinforced composites under transverse loading including the renowned Puck’s criteria. This has been partially validated based on the experimental correlations with the predictions made by the M-C criterion for a few set of test cases, which remains a debatable way of formulating composites failure criterion. It is brought to attention that Mohr utilised the concept of principal stresses in constructing principal circles and assumed that the outermost circle represents the critical state of failure. This hypothesis and its derivative “failure is dictated by the stresses acting on the fracture surface” have thus been used for formulating the criterion for isotropic materials that exhibit brittle fracture characteristics. However, the concept of principal stresses is not employable in the analysis of composites. Hence, the same hypothesis may not be applicable in studying composite materials. Also, the micromechanical aspects that lead to failure have not been taken into consideration in this hypothesis which can lead to incorrect predictions in the case of composite materials. The capability of an appropriately representative unit cell model in better understanding the micromechanical aspects and the implications of the hypothesis is studied by attempting micromechanical analysis of UD composites through UnitCells© tool. It is utilised to locate stress concentrations within the unit cell from which the likely angle of the fracture surface can be identified. It has also been shown that the stress concentrations could help locate the fracture angle for UD composite materials as a sufficient but not a necessary requirement due to the presence of non-linear behaviour before fracture. If one wishes to employ M-C failure hypothesis to formulate a failure criterion, the assumption that the failure is determined by the stresses exposed on fracture surface has to be made with caution

Effectiveness of expert system on knowledge retention

Artificial intelligence based computer programmes called Expert System has received a great deal of attention throughout the world, due to its impressive problem solving capability in a variety of fields. For the present study, an expert system named as RUBEXS-04 was designed to simulate the pest and disease diagnosing behaviour

Information utilization behaviour and constraint analysis among shrimp farmers

Information utilization behaviour and constraint analysis among 60 selected Slzrimp farmers of Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh was studied. The findings of the study revealed that private consultants followed by feed technicians were the most important sources of information utilized by 76.67 per cent and 71.67 per cent of Shrimp farmers. Among constraints, disease incidence, poor quality of seeds and lack of quality control agencies were expressed by 81.67, 63.33 and 65.00 per cent of the respondents. Among the suggestions offered by the Shrimp farmers, setting up of disease diagnostic centers, seed certifying agencies and quality con trol agencies for regulating the quality of chemicals accoreded top priority

Perceptions of rubber growers on information technology enabled rubber export system

The Expert system for plant protection of rubber was developed using Visual Basic 6. O. The computer based Rubber Expert System thus developed was abbreviated as RUBEX-04. Perceptions of Rubber Growers on Information Technology enabled Rubber Expert System was studied. It was evident that, majority of the respondents (60.83 per cent) were found to have high level of perception about modern information communication technologies, followed by 21.67 per cent with medium and remaining 17.50 per cent with low level of perception of modern information and communication technologies. It could be exonerated from the study that slightly less than three-fourth of the respondents reported that they were most satisfied with the diagnostic path which was sequential and logic in RUBEXS-04. A majority (81.67 per cent) of the respondents were most satisfied about the correct conclusion provided by the RUBEXS-04. More than half of the respondents were most satisfied that, photographs helped them to confirm the incidence of disease and pests. Most of the subjects preferred the Expert System for other technologies of rubber like, latex preservation and processing, tapping and yield stimulation and soil management, in addition to RUBEXS-04

Perception of attributes of shrimp farming technologies by shrimp farmers

During the last decade, shrimp aquaculture has become a major sector of fish farming in terms of space occupied and of inarket value. In India, commercial shrimp farming ,tan ed gaining roots oflly during the mid eighties. The boom period of commercial scale shrimp culture in India started in 1990 and the bust came in 1995-96, with the outbreak of viral disease