Toxic Effect of Synthetic Pyrithroid Pesticide (Cypermethrin) and an Organo Phospate Pesticide (Chlorpyrifos) on Certain Parameters of fresh water Carp Fish Labeo rohita

Aquatic ecosystems are vulnerable to the detrimental effects of variousagrochemicals, including synthetic pyrethroids and organophosphates. In thisstudy, we investigated the toxicity of cypermethrin and chlorpyrifos on acommonly found freshwater fish species Labeo rohita,. The fish Labeo rohita weretreated for acute toxicity with cypermethrin and chlorpyrifos, separately and incombination for 7 days with 1/10th of the LC50 dosage for individual treatment(0.015ppm and 0.042ppm respectively) and 1/20th of the LC50 of cypermethrin andchlorpyrifos for combined treatment (i.e., 0.0075ppm and 0.021ppm respectively).Individual and combined treatment resulted in a significant (p<0.05) change inglucogen, proteins and lipid contents in muscle, liver and kidney tissues wererecorded. Muscle shows the greatest loss of protein followed by liver and kidney.Liver shows significant reduction of lipid and glycogen in comparison with otherselected tissues of the experimental fish species. The changes were greater incombination than individual treatment, possibly because of a synergistic effect ofcypermethrin and chlorpyrifo

Assessment of feed and fodder availability and requirement in Andhra Pradesh

The present study aimed to estimate the feed and fodder demand for the existing livestock population and supply in Andhra Pradesh. For the study the secondary data was collected from the different sources. The livestock population was converted into Ruminant Livestock Units (RLU) based on the species, age and sex. Ruminant Livestock Units (RLU) were considered to have a body weight of 350 kg and a dry matter intake of 2 per cent of their body weight. The total RLU in the state is 9.24 million, requiring 23.61 million tonnes of feed and fodder on dry matter basis. Availability of dry fodder and concentrates were estimated using appropriate conversion ratios to different crop production while green fodder was estimated by applying per hectare yield to different fodder sources The total annual availability of feed and fodder in the state was estimated to be 33.13 million tonnes against the requirement of 23.61 million tonnes and thereby excess of around 40.35 per cent per annum. The availability of feed and fodder was excess in 9 districts except for the Visakhapatnam, Prakasam, Kadapa and Anantapuram districts of the state. Average dry matter availability in the state was 9.82 kg/RLU/day against the requirement (7 kg). Creation of fodder banks and transport fodder to the deficit areas of the country are the policies to be developed and need priority attention to solve the problem of fodder in deficit areas

Economic effect of mechanical intervention through sub-soiling on growth and yield of rainfed pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan)

A two-year field experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of sub-soiling on plant growth, root morphology and yield of rainfed pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L. ) Millsp.] (Var LRG 41) during 2012-13 and 2013-14. Crop exposed to moisture stress condition from flowering to harvest (120 days) during 2013-14, compared to experiment conducted during 2012-13. The results indicated that sub-soil tillage sustained higher shoot, root growth and seed yield during the year 2013-14, which coincided with end of season drought compared to conventional tillage treatment. Crop growth in terms of plant height, leaf area/plant significantly improved due to sub-soiling compared to conventionally tilled treatment. Similarly sub-soiling recorded significant increase in drought tolerant traits, viz. root length (234%), root dry weight (274%) and relative water content (37%). Consequently, sub-soil tillage recorded significant increase in number of pods/plant by 59%, 100 seed weight by 12% and pod yield by 219% compared to conventionally tilled treatment. Sub-soil tillage proved efficient method of mechanical intervention for drought mitigation under rainfed pigeonpea cultivation

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Two Prominent Entomopathogenic Fungi Beauveria bassiana (Balsamo) Vuillemin and Metarhizium anisopliae (Metchnikoff) Sorokin as Natural Enemies of Lepidopteran Larvae from Rayalaseema Region of Andhra Pradesh

Roving survey was conducted for searching the natural occurrence of Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium anisopliae during kharif season of 2022 and rabi season of 2022-23 in Kurnool, Kadapa, Chittoor and Anantapuramu districts of Andhra pradesh. The crops surveyed were Groundnut, Maize, Cotton, greengram and blackgram during September to October of kharif season and January to February of rabi season. The pest population found in among groundnut crops were Spodoptera litura, Helicoverpa armigera and Aproarema modicella and maize, Spodoptera frugiperda which were found at vegetative stage. The fungal infected cadavers of lepidopteran lavae were observed on the soil below the canopy or adhering to the foliage of groundnut and maize crops. The larval cadavers were collected in separate aseptic vials and soil samples were also collected from the surveyed fields. During the survey, it was found that the mean number of infected cadavers with fungi varied from 2.6 to 3.2 per square meter in Kurnool district during Sep-Oct of 2022. In Anantapuramu district the mean number of cadavers were 1.4-2.2 during Jan-Feb of 2023. In Chittoor district the mean number of infected cadavers were varied from 2.4-3.6, whereas in Kadapa district it was 0.2 per square meter during Jan-Feb of 2023. The cadavers were cultured in the lab and based on morphological characters confirmed the isolates as Beauveria bassiana and Metarhizium anispoliae. The cadavers of B. bassiana were found to be high in Kurnool district followed by Chittoor district and least in Kadapa district where as the cadavers of M.anispoliae were found to be higher in Chittoor district followed by Anantapuramu district and Nil in Kadapa district

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Not AvailableThe estimates of the components of genetic variation were worked out by Kempthorne method from a Line x Tester analysis in castor for fourteen plant type related traits. The analysis for combining ability revealed significant mean sum of squares of both general combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA) for all the characters which indicated the presence of both additive and non-additive gene actions. The ratio of GCA variance and SCA variance ratio revealed the predominance of non-additive gene action for all the traits except plant height up to primary spike, no. of nodes up to primary spike, no. of capsules/primary spike and total spike length of secondary. JP-87 was good general combiner for most of the characters including seed yield. The line DCS-106 was also a good general combiner for early flowering, days to maturity and number of capsules on secondary spike. Cross JP-87 × RG-1740/A was a good specific combiner for seed yield per plant and for other yield component. The hybrid DPC-9 × RG-156 with good specific combining ability for days to maturity can be used for yield improvement in castor. In general for yield and other yield attributing traits the promising hybrids with high heterosis were JP-87 × RG-1740/A, JP-87 × DCS-106, DPC-17 × RG-156, DPC-17 × DCS-106 and DPC-17 × DCS-107 were on par with the check. These cross combinations could be utilized for further use in breeding programme for improvement in yield of castor.Not Availabl

Development and Standardisation of Scale to Measure Attitude of the Farmers towards Natural Farming: A Sustainable Environmental Approach

Attitude is defined as the degree of favourable or unfavourable feeling of the farmers towards natural farming. Natural farming, a sustainable agricultural practice that eschews synthetic inputs, has garnered significant interest globally for its potential to enhance soil health, biodiversity and crop resilience. Understanding farmer’s attitude towards natural farming is crucial for its widespread adoption. It is the accepted fact that attitude of an individual plays an important role in determining ones behaviour. Keeping this in view a standardized scale has been developed to assess the attitude of the farmers towards natural farming. The Likert’s summated rating method was used to construct the scale. The process started with collection of items followed by relevancy testing and item analysis and checking the reliability and validity for precision and consistency. A total of twenty four statements were finally retained for measuring attitude of the farmers towards natural farming, out of which fourteen statements were positive and ten statements were negative. The reliability was checked using split-half method and validity was examined through content validity. The scale developed was found highly reliable and valid