2,560 research outputs found
Effective and Economically Viable Organic Agriculture under Inhana Rational Farming (IRF) Technology – A Potential Alternative to Support India Organic Movement
Organic farming has been identified as the road map for food sovereignty, economic security, and alleviation of food toxicity. And, with changing climatic patterns it has become more of a necessity for harnessing both mitigation and adaptation potentials. For sustainable agriculture qualitative developments of soil has been prioritized. But it has been a time taking process, moreover; component wise redressal has not provided much relief considering that still now not even 1% of total agricultural production world over is organic. To reach the objective in a time bound manner, besides healthy soil, healthy plant system has become pre-requisite, as also supported by ‘Trophobiosis theory’ of French scientist F. Chabassou (1985) that depicts ‘Healthy Plants’ as the trump card for successful agriculture. There has been need for a method/ practice/ technology which can etch out the scientific road map towards the objective, at the same time should be Safe, Effective, Complete, Convenient and Economical; i.e., the five foundation pillars for ensuring large scale adoptability.
Inhana Rational Farming (IRF) Technology a comprehensive organic package of practice (POP) was developed by Indian Scientist Dr. P. Das Biswas, and has been ensuring sustainable agriculture for more than a decade now. Production of approximately 2.0 million kg certified organic teas annually in a cost- effective manner substantiates its efficacy while recognition of West Jalinga as ‘World’s 1st Carbon Neutral, Organic Tea Garden’ evidences its GHG mitigation and carbon sequestration potentials. FAO-CFC-TBI Project entitled ‘Development, Production and Trade of Organic Tea’ (at Maud Tea Estate, Assam; period: 2008-2013) provided opportunity to test IRF Technology in terms of yield, soil development and economics as compared to all other available organic methods/ POP. Highest yield, speedy soil quality rejuvenation was recorded under IRF Technology at lowest economics and under all growth phases of tea plant viz. mature, young, newly planted and nursery.
The comprehensive process of soil and plant energization i.e. invigorating the native soil microflora as well infusion of deficient energy for plant metabolic functions has ensured the universality of IRF Technology. Projects undertaken in collaboration of State/ Central Agricultural Universities and Krishi Vigyan Kendra in a wide variety of field crops viz. cereals (rain fed and winter paddy, baby corn), pulses (green/ black gram), vegetables (tomato, potato, okra, cauliflower, cabbage, chilli, radish etc.) and exotic vegetables (horse radish, celery, Chinese cabbage, pak choi, broccoli, parsley etc.); have substantiated technological effectiveness. These field trials in diverse ecological regions of West Bengal indicated that yield sustenance/ hike is possible under organic, even from the very first year, and can ensure economic security even without any support price for organic.
To evaluate the status of developments proposed under IRF Technology and standardize various components of crop production, several tools have also been developed viz. Compost Quality Index, Soil Quality/ Development Index, SWOT Study, Crop Pesticide Pollution Index, Pesticide Load on Crop, Soil Pesticide Pollution Index, etc.
The initiatives and experience under IRF Technology indicate that it can be used as a potent weapon for economically viable, large scale and energy efficient organic farming; especially relevant with India’s commitment towards climate change and GHG mitigation and for tapping the growing export potentials
Evaluation of Antitumor Activity of Cuscuta Reflexa Roxb (Cuscutaceae) Against Ehrlich Ascites Carcinoma in Swiss Albino Mice
Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the antitumor effect of the chloroform and ethanol extract of the whole plant of Cuscuta reflexa Roxb. (Cuscutaceae) in Swiss albino mice against Ehrlich Ascites Carcinoma (EAC) cell line.Methods: The antitumor activity of the chloroform and ethanol extracts of Cuscuta reflexa was evaluated against Ehrlich ascites carcinoma (EAC) tumor in mice at doses of 200 and 400 mg/kg body weight orally, respectively, while acute oral toxicity studies were performed to determine the safety of the extracts. Briefly, the EAC cells were injected (i.p.) into ninty six mice (divided into 6 numerically equal groups), and after a one-day incubation period, the extracts were administered to the mice daily for 16 days. On day 21, six animals in each group were sacrificed for observation of antitumor activity and the remaining animals were observed to determine host the life span. Antitumor effect was determined by evaluating tumor volume, viable and nonviable tumor cell count and hematological parameters of the host. The standard antitumor used was 5-fluorouracil.Results: Administration of the extracts resulted in a significant (p < 0.05) decrease in tumor volume and viable cell count, but increased non-viable cell count and mean survival time, thereby increasing the life span of the tumor-bearing mice. Restoration of hematological parameters - red blood cells (RBC), hemoglobin, white blood cells (WBC) and lymphocyte count - to normal levels in extract-treated mice was also observed.Conclusion: The results suggest that the chloroform and ethanol extracts of C. reflexa exhibit significant antitumor activity in EAC-bearing mice that is comparable to that of the reference standard, 5-fluorouracil.Keywords: Cuscuta reflexa, Ehrlich ascites carcinoma, 5-Fluorouracil, Tumor volume, Viable cell count
Value Iteration for Long-run Average Reward in Markov Decision Processes
Markov decision processes (MDPs) are standard models for probabilistic
systems with non-deterministic behaviours. Long-run average rewards provide a
mathematically elegant formalism for expressing long term performance. Value
iteration (VI) is one of the simplest and most efficient algorithmic approaches
to MDPs with other properties, such as reachability objectives. Unfortunately,
a naive extension of VI does not work for MDPs with long-run average rewards,
as there is no known stopping criterion. In this work our contributions are
threefold. (1) We refute a conjecture related to stopping criteria for MDPs
with long-run average rewards. (2) We present two practical algorithms for MDPs
with long-run average rewards based on VI. First, we show that a combination of
applying VI locally for each maximal end-component (MEC) and VI for
reachability objectives can provide approximation guarantees. Second, extending
the above approach with a simulation-guided on-demand variant of VI, we present
an anytime algorithm that is able to deal with very large models. (3) Finally,
we present experimental results showing that our methods significantly
outperform the standard approaches on several benchmarks
Evaluation of On- farm produced Novcom Compost Quality and its Post Soil Application Effectivity in Acid Tea Soils – A Case Study from West Jalinga Tea Estate, the Largest Organic Tea Estate in Assam, India.
A new composting process known as Novcom composting method is being used for on-farm production of compost at West Jalinga Tea Estate (presently largest certified organic tea estate in Assam, India). The method has been developed by Dr. P. Das Biswas, an Indian Scientist who has been associated with organic research for the last decade. Novcom compost produced under this method is being used for soil management in the garden. The composting process enables production of mature compost within a period of 21 days. Quality of Novcom compost and its post soil application effectivity in terms of soil development were studied during the period 2006-7 to 2012-13. The samples were analyzed for physicochemical properties, nutrient content, ready nutrient supplying potential, microbial status, stability, maturity and phytotoxicity status; and the values obtained for the different parameters were within the standard suggested reference range. Soil microbial population increased by 1,000 to 10,000 times, apart from significant increase recorded in case of soil organic carbon (49.4%) and soil fertility (Available-N: 13.6%, P2O5: 5.8% and K2O: 9.5%). Post soil application effectivity of Novcom compost was documented both in terms of significant soil quality development as well as yield sustenance at West Jalinga T.E. which had been applying the compost @ 3 ton/ha/year; over a period of seven years. The study revealed that Novcom composting method could serve as an alternate option for production of good quality on-farm compost in order to enable effective soil management
Effect of dust and anthropogenic aerosols on columnar aerosol optical properties over Darjeeling (2200 m asl), Eastern Himalayas, India
Background: The loading of atmospheric particulate matter (aerosol) in the eastern Himalaya is mainly regulated by the locally generated anthropogenic aerosols from the biomass burning and by the aerosols transported from the distance sources. These different types of aerosol loading not only affect the aerosol chemistry but also produce consequent signature on the radiative properties of aerosol. Methodology/Principal Findings: An extensive study has been made to study the seasonal variations in aerosol components of fine and coarse mode aerosols and black carbon along with the simultaneous measurements of aerosol optical depth on clear sky days over Darjeeling, a high altitude station (2200 masl) at eastern Himalayas during the year 2008. We observed a heavy loading of fine mode dust component (Ca2+) during pre-monsoon (Apr - May) which was higher by 162 than its annual mean whereas during winter (Dec - Feb), the loading of anthropogenic aerosol components mainly from biomass burning (fine mode SO4 2- and black carbon) were higher (76 for black carbon and 96 for fine mode SO4 2-) from their annual means. These high increases in dust aerosols during pre-monsoon and anthropogenic aerosols during winter enhanced the aerosol optical depth by 25 and 40, respectively. We observed that for every 1 increase in anthropogenic aerosols, AOD increased by 0.55 during winter whereas for every 1 increase in dust aerosols, AOD increased by 0.46 during pre-monsoon. Conclusion/Significance: The natural dust transport process (during pre-monsoon) plays as important a role in the radiation effects as the anthropogenic biomass burning (during winter) and their differential effects (rate of increase of the AOD with that of the aerosol concentration) are also very similar. This should be taken into account in proper modeling of the atmospheric environment over eastern Himalayas
Kinetic exchange opinion model: solution in the single parameter map limit
We study a recently proposed kinetic exchange opinion model (Lallouache et.
al., Phys. Rev E 82:056112, 2010) in the limit of a single parameter map.
Although it does not include the essentially complex behavior of the multiagent
version, it provides us with the insight regarding the choice of order
parameter for the system as well as some of its other dynamical properties. We
also study the generalized two- parameter version of the model, and provide the
exact phase diagram. The universal behavior along this phase boundary in terms
of the suitably defined order parameter is seen.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure
Soil Microbial Rejuvenation through Soil Resource Recycling as a part of Sustainable Management Programme: A Case Study from Lakhipara Tea Estate, Dooars, West Bengal, India
Quest for sustainability in the Indian tea industry starts on a serious note in the backdrop of several key issues such as impact of climate change on crop productivity, higher intensity of pest and diseases, rampant use of agrochemicals, issue of pesticide residues, increasing mandays cost etc. In this difficult time when most of the tea producers are looking for areas for cost curtailment, Goodricke Group Ltd., initiated the Sustainable Management Programme with the objectivity of producing sustainable teas with low pesticide footprint from the year 2014 onwards. The present study was conducted as a part of the above programme, to evaluate the effectiveness of on-farm generated compost towards soil microbial enrichment.
Large-scale composting was done using Novcom composting method and end product quality was analyzed as per International Standards. Total N, P, K in the mature compost was 1.97%, 0.75%, and 0.87%, respectively but most important was the presence of self-generated microbial population in the order of 1014–1016 c.f.u. The rate of CO2 evolution, nitrification index and phytotoxicity bioassay value confirmed end product maturity and absence of any
toxicity towards root growth. Assessment of Soil development Index (SDI), one year post compost application showed maximum soil development under organic soil management followed by soils receiving integrated soil management whereas nominal variation was documented under conventional soil management. Biological properties of soil were found to play a major contributory role towards variation of SDI value indicating the importance of
microbial rejuvenation towards soil quality development
Pressure induced electronic and NaCl to CsCl type transitions in some rare earth monotellurides
High pressure X-ray diffraction study reveals that PrTe, SmTe and EuTe which possess NaCl type structure transform to CsCl type at 90 i 10, 110 t 10, 100 t 10kbar respectively. Prior to this transformation SmTe shows an anomalous decrease in volume with pressure, which is attributed to the 4f-5d electronic transition
LNCS
Discrete-time Markov Chains (MCs) and Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are two standard formalisms in system analysis. Their main associated quantitative objectives are hitting probabilities, discounted sum, and mean payoff. Although there are many techniques for computing these objectives in general MCs/MDPs, they have not been thoroughly studied in terms of parameterized algorithms, particularly when treewidth is used as the parameter. This is in sharp contrast to qualitative objectives for MCs, MDPs and graph games, for which treewidth-based algorithms yield significant complexity improvements. In this work, we show that treewidth can also be used to obtain faster algorithms for the quantitative problems. For an MC with n states and m transitions, we show that each of the classical quantitative objectives can be computed in O((n+m)⋅t2) time, given a tree decomposition of the MC with width t. Our results also imply a bound of O(κ⋅(n+m)⋅t2) for each objective on MDPs, where κ is the number of strategy-iteration refinements required for the given input and objective. Finally, we make an experimental evaluation of our new algorithms on low-treewidth MCs and MDPs obtained from the DaCapo benchmark suite. Our experiments show that on low-treewidth MCs and MDPs, our algorithms outperform existing well-established methods by one or more orders of magnitude
Assessment of Prolonged Unsafe Conditions through Tidal Flood and Rain water Flood at Lower Bengal Basin, India
Abstract Khejuri police station is located at the lower Bengal Basin near the Hugli river mouth under Midnapore (east). It is considered as a littoral tract region having monsoon climatic character. Naturally this area is known for its agricultural potential. Rice, Betel leaves, Lemons and various types of vegetables like potato, Brinzal, Chilli, Sugarcane stick etc. are the main crops produced which are sent to local and national markets which is important in the context of national trade. The present paper seeks to analyze the problems of land degradation due to recurring water logging that has been instrumental in losing the earlier glory of the area as an agriculturally potential tract
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