A Study on Evolving Optimal Cropping Patterns in Groundwater Over-exploited Region of Perambalur District of Tamil Nadu

Falling groundwater tables and depletion of economically accessible groundwater resources would have major social and economic consequences. The present study has been taken up with the overall objective of evolving optimal crop plans to sustain the use of groundwater resources for irrigation. Perambalur district was purposively selected for the study as it mainly depends on groundwater for its irrigation. Linear programming technique was used to evolve optimal crop plans. The constraints identified were primarily irrigation water, besides land availability during the cultivating seasons and capital. Six typical farms were selected, one each for the open well, wells in tank command area and tubewell-irrigated farms in critical and over-exploited groundwater regime and also for semi-critical and safe groundwater regime. The results of the optimal crop plans derived showed that the irrigation water-use in the critical period could be reduced by 24.30, 4.54 and 51.71 hours of pumping in ordinary wells, wells in tank command area and tubewell-irrigated farms, respectively in critical and over-exploited groundwater regime sample farms. In the semi-critical and safe groundwater regime sample farms, the optimal crop plans revealed that the irrigation water-use in the critical period could be reduced by 4.61, 3.99, and 4.73 hours of pumping in ordinary wells, wells in tank command area and tubewell-irrigated farms, respectively. Area under high water intensive crops namely, paddy and sugarcane declined almost in all the optimal crop plans. Area under low water intensive crops (groundnut, gingelly and tapioca) showed an increasing trend in all optimal crop plans. The net income of the sample farms increased marginally or considerably in the optimal crop plans of both the critical and overexploited groundwater regime sample farms and semi-critical and the safe groundwater regime sample farmsAgricultural and Food Policy,

Randomised positive control trial of NSAID and antimicrobial treatment for calf fever caused by pneumonia

One hundred and fifty-four preweaning calves were followed between May and October 2015. Calves were fitted with continuous monitoring temperature probes (TempVerified FeverTag), programmed so a flashing light emitting diode (LED) light was triggered following six hours of a sustained ear canal temperature of ≥39.7°C. A total of 83 calves (61.9 per cent) developed undifferentiated fever, with a presumptive diagnosis of pneumonia through exclusion of other calf diseases. Once fever was detected, calves were randomly allocated to treatment groups. Calves in group 1 (NSAID) received 2 mg/kg flunixin meglumine (Allevinix, Merial) for three consecutive days and group 2 (antimicrobial) received 6 mg/kg gamithromycin (Zactran, Merial). If fever persisted for 72 hours after the initial treatment, calves were given further treatment (group 1 received antimicrobial and group 2 received NSAID). Calves in group 1 (NSAID) were five times more likely (P=0.002) to require a second treatment (the antimicrobial) after 72 hours to resolve the fever compared with the need to give group 2 (antimicrobial) calves a second treatment (NSAID). This demonstrates the importance of ongoing monitoring and follow-up of calves with respiratory disease. However, of calves with fever in group 1 (NSAID), 25.7 per cent showed resolution following NSAID-only treatment with no detrimental effect on the development of repeated fever or daily live weight gain. This suggests that NSAID alone may be a useful first-line treatment, provided adequate attention is given to ongoing monitoring to identify those cases that require additional antimicrobial treatment

Production and evaluation of cereal-legume based infant porridge formulations

Dietary quality is an important limiting factor to adequate nutrition of infants in many developing countries. Supplementation of cereal flour with inexpensive legumes helps in improving the nutritional quality of cereal products. Seven types of blends were formulated in different proportions using 60% of red rice and 40% of pulses such as; black gram, green gram and cowpea. Pre-ge latinized rice was added to enhance the deliciousness of the developed product. Roasting process was carried out in order to produce the products with lower moisture content (3.5%) and to extend the shelf life. Moisture content was noted to be high in green gram added blends compared to others. The use of pulses as a fortifying agent effectively increased the protein content of the blends. Contents of fat, sugar, fibre and the level of mineral for the blends were also within the acceptable levels. There were significant differences (P<0.05) between treatments in nutritional and sensory qualities. The formula with red rice (60%), black gram (20%) and green gram (20%) combination was selected as the best blend. Based on the Tukey's experiment, higher hedonic scores were obtained for colour, aroma, taste and absence of off-flavour for this treatment. The characteristic nutty flavor of black gram and green gram, which were produced from roasting, was accepted by the sensory panel. In contrast, cowpea added blend resulted in lower scores. Based on standard nutritional and sensory values, a combination of either rice with green gram and black gram could be recommended as appropriate cereal-based porridge mixture for infants

The effects of salt stress on growth physiology of selected okra (Abelmoschusesculentus L.) cultivars

Salinity due to over-accumulation of NaCl is usually of great concern and it is the most injurious factor in arid and semi arid regions. Considering this feature, an experiment was conducted to evaluate the salinity stress responses of selected okra cultivators on Diffusive Resistance (DR) and Relative Water Content (RWC). The okra cultivars 'Haritha‘, 'EUOK2‘ and 'MI5‘ were used for this study. Sodium chloride (100mM) was used to create the salinity while, distilled water was used as control. Salt stress significantly increased the DR of the selected okra cultivars. The highest increase (5.1 scm-1)was obtained in the 'MI5‘ followed by 'Haritha‘(4.2scm-1) and 'EUOK2‘(3.6 scm-1). The highest increase found in the 'MI5‘ okra cultivar would have been due to tight closure of stomata in this cultivar compared to the others. The lowest value found in the 'EUOK2‘ would have been due to its inherent characteristic feature. The stomates of this cultivar would have kept opened relatively widely than the others. Salt stress significantly reduced the RWC of the selected okra cultivars. The highest reduction (58.7 %) was found in the 'MI5‘ followed by 'Haritha‘ (67.3 %) and 'EUOK2‘ (73.5 %). The 'EUOK 2‘ maintained relatively high amount of water in their leaf tissues under salinity stress. All these events indicate that 'EUOK 2‘ cultivar of okra had the ability to withstand salinity stress much better than the others. As a result, 'EUOK2‘ was recognized as the most salinity tolerant okra cultivar which could be grown in the salt affected areas of the sandy regosols

Assessing the salt tolerance of selected rice cultivars {oryza sativa L) during the seedling stage

A laboratory study was conducted to evaluate the salt tolerance of selected rice cultivars viz At 307, Bg 358 and 'PachaiperumaP. Paddy seedlings were raised in river sand and were transplanted in Modified Yoshida Solution which contained 120 (Si solution) and OmM (S2 solution) NaCl. The pH of these solutions was adjusted to 4.5 by adding 0.1% nitric acid. This experiment was laid out in the Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with six treatments and four replications. The plant height was recorded on the 3rd and 6th day after transplanting. The number of green leaves, root length and plant dry weight were obtained on the seventh day of transplanting in the culture solution. Results revealed that there were significant differences between treatments in the plant height, number of green leaves and plant dry weight The maximum plant height was obtained in the At 307 (16.7cm) on the 6th day (under stressed condition) while minimum height was observed in the 'Pachaiperumal' (9.25cm). In contrast, 'PachchaiperumaT produced the highest root length (19.8) while Bg 358 produced the lowest root length (16.8). There was no interaction effect on plant height and root length between the cultivars and solution at 5% level. The number of green leaves on the 7* day after transplanting was high in 'PachchaipewmaT (2.25) and it was low in Bg 358 (1.00). Plant dry weight on the seventh day after transplanting in culture solution had significant difference among treatments. At 307 had the maximum plant dry weight (0.17g) in stressed condition and the minimum plant dry weight (0.14g) was obtained by 'PachaiperumaT. It was also found that mere was significant interaction between cultivars and culture solution in plant dry weight. The overall performance of At 307 was the best compared to the other two cultivars with regard to plant height and plant dry weight From these results, At 307 was selected as the best cultivar, which had better salt tolerance compared to the other two cultivars

Enhanced Imputation Method Combining Single and Multiple Methods to Handle Missing Values in Microarray Data

Gene Expression Classification (GEC) is a modern healthcare approach for enhancing present medical practices by classifying patient’s gene structure to different types of cancer so as to provide effective and personalized treatments especially for all types of cancer. The GEC system aids medical practitioner in providing personalized treatments. The proposed GEC system assess the gene structure of a cancer patient through highly intensive computational intelligence technique named Genetic Algorithm (GA). In GA, the search space is composed of candidate solutions to the problem i.e. the collection of gene expression in the corpus, which is going to be used for training the computation model, which can further be used for testing new cancer patients in order to make accurate prediction about the presence of cancer cells. This will enable doctors to treat different cancer patients differently. In this proposed approach, each gene expression has been represented by a vector termed as chromosomes. In each generation, the chromosomes are selected randomly and fitness is evaluated. The probabilistic similarity function is used to estimate the fitness of the chromosome to predict the patient health condition. Experimental results show that the proposed approach works with relatively better accuracy compared to that of baseline approaches

Productive performance of tomato (lycopersicon esculentum mill.) treated with coir pith based compost

Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) is an important vegetable which serves as a cash crop for the farmers of Sri Lanka. Due to high temperature, poor availability of water and improper nutrient management, the production of tomato is below the potential level. Coir pith compost (CPC) has favorable properties to be used as organic manure. Hence a pot experiment was conducted during the 'yala' season at the department of Agricultural Biology of Eastern University Sri Lanka to study the effects of CPC on the productive performance of tomato. Five treatments with recommended inorganic fertilizers (TO); farmyard manure (FYM) (Tl); CPC (T2); combination of FYM and inorganic fertilizers (T3); and combination of CPC and inorganic fertilizers (T4) were arranged in Complete Randomized Design with four replications. Performance of tomato was assessed in terms of plant height, number of leaves per plant, Leaf Area Index (LAI) and yield components such as number of fruits per plant, fruit size and fresh yield. The results revealed that the highest number of leaves and fruits per plant were recorded in T3. Mean fruit size and LAI were significantly (P< 0.05) higher in T4. Even though the highest yield was recorded in T4 it did not differ significantly (P< 0.05) with that of T3. It was noted that combined use of fertilizers either CPC and inorganic fertilizer or FYM and inorganic fertilizer has resulted in better yield (28% higher than control). Hence it could be concluded that coir pith compost can be used as an organic manure to improve the productivity of tomato cultivation

A first-order spatial integer-valued autoregressive SINAR(1,1) model.

Binomial thinning operator has a major role in modeling one-dimensional integer-valued autoregressive time series models. The purpose of this article is to extend the use of such operator to define a new stationary first-order spatial non negative, integer-valued autoregressive SINAR (1,1) model. We study some properties of this model like the mean, variance and autocorrelation function. Yule-Walker estimator of the model parameters is also obtained. Some numerical results of the model are presented and, moreover, this model is applied to a real data set

Improvement in Millet Soaking by Way of Bubbled Cold Plasma Processed Air Exposure; Phytic Acid Reduction Cum Nutrient Analysis Concern

Pearl millet is one of the high-grown and underutilized grain crops. It is confined to traditional foods due to its anti-nutritional and functional properties. The present study investigated the influence of plasma processed air bubbling and soaking on phytic acid content, total and HCl extractable iron, physicochemical, techno-functional, and pasting properties of pearl millet. Exposure of pearl millet to plasma processed air bubbling at 180 V with an airflow rate of 10 liters /h for 1 h and 2 h reduced phytic acid content by 60.66 % and 39.27 % respectively. Whereas soaking for 12 h reduced phytic acid by 21.6 % in contrast with the untreated sample. The total iron content reduced from 39.9 to 29.8 mg/100g and HCl extractable iron content increased from 12 % to 69.49 % with the given treatments. Obtained data were noticed with significant changes (p &lt; 0.05) and are in line with its exposure to the selected variable treatments. This work points to the potentiality of plasma processed air pre-treatment in the food industry to improve nutrition and mineral availability accompanied by modifying pasting, techno-functional properties of pearl millet

Structure Activity relationship of Bioactive Compounds from Medicinal Plants

Natural products provide a starting point for new synthetic compounds with diverse structures and often with multiple stereocenters that can be challenging synthetically. Many structural features common to natural products (e.g., chiral centers, aromatic rings, complex ring systems, degree of molecule saturation, and number and ratio of heteroatoms) have been shown to be highly relevant to drug discovery efforts. Furthermore, since the escalation of interest in combinatorial chemistry and the subsequent realization that these compound libraries may not always be very diverse, many synthetic and medicinal chemists are exploring the creation of natural product and natural-product like libraries that combine the structural features of natural products with the compound-generating potential of combinatorial chemistry. Drugs derived from medicinal plants can serve not only as new drugs themselves but also as drug leads suitable for optimization by medicinal and synthetic chemists. Even when new chemical structures are not found during drug discovery from medicinal plants, known compounds with new biological activity can provide important drug leads. • Since the sequencing of the human genome, thousands of new molecular targets have been identified as important in various diseases. With the advent of highthroughput screening assays directed towards these targets, known compounds from medicinal plants may show promising and possibly selective activity. Hence, in the present study, embelin and mangiferin were selected as lead compounds for semi synthetic drug development. Embelin showed antifertility, anti-implantation, antitumour, anti-inflammatory, analgesic, antioxidant, hepatoprotective, wound healing and antibacterial activities [13-19]. Except these studies so far no other biological studies have been carried out. However, embelin has not been tested so far for anticonvulsant, antidiabetic, effect against inflammatory bowel disease and neuroprotection activities, though the plant (Embelia ribes) is reported against such a disorders [9,10,32,63,64,76,77]. Hence, in the present study, anticonvulsant, antidiabetic, effect in inflammatory bowel disease and neuroprotective activities of embelin were also carried out. • The plants selected for the study were berries of Embelia ribes and leaves of Mangifera indica. The plant materials were collected and authenticated. The dried materials were extracted and isolation of embelin and mangiferin was carried out from the respective plants. • Structural modification of embelin was carried out for structure activity relationship studies. Embelin was condensed with various aromatic substituted primary amines to yield sixteen new and eight known derivatives along with novel embelin-ninhydrin adduct were prepared. All these compounds were synthesized and purified by standard procedures, identified by using physical and spectral (IR, 1H NMR, 13C NMR and MS) properties. • During the last two decades, there has been a growing interest in studies that concern with prevention of uncontrolled oxidative process leading to various diseases in living system. Several studies have shown the role of oxidative stress in the causation and progression of various diseases including atherosclerosis, carcinogenesis, neurodegenerative diseases, radiation damage, aging and various other pathological effects. Antioxidant and related properties of the plant Embelia ribes and embelin are well known. Hence, all the synthesized compounds along with embelin were tested for in vitro antioxidant activity using ABTS and DPPH methods. When p-hydroxy aniline (10), sulphanilamide (13) phenyl alanine (21), phenyl hydrazine (22), 2,4-dinitro phenyl hydrazine (23) and tryptophan (24) were substituted at C-5 of embelin and substitution of o-phenylene diamine (25), the activity was found to be more potent than embelin in ABTS and DPPH methods. These compounds along with embelin were studied for analgesic and anti-inflammatory activities at 10 and 20 mg/kg doses by standard methods. Potent analgesic activity higher than the standard pentazocine was observed. Embelin and its derivatives almost completely abolished the acetic acid induced writhing. p-Sulfonylamine, phenyl propionic acid and phenazine derivatives showed better anti-inflammatory activity than embelin. • Based on a reaction of ninhydrin with phenols, embelin-ninhydrin adduct was prepared and characterized. It exhibited better antioxidant activity in DPPH method. The analgesic and anti-inflammatory activities were also found to be better than the parent moiety, embelin. In the acetic acid induced writhing almost complete abolition of writhing was observed at 10 and 20 mg/kg body weight doses of embelin-ninhydrin adduct and the results were found to be better than the standard pentazocine. • Structural modification of mangiferin was carried out for structure activity relationship studies. One new compound and three known derivatives were prepared from mangiferin. All these compounds were synthesized and purified by standard procedures, identified by using physical and spectral (IR, 1H NMR, 13C NMR and MS) properties. • The synthesized mangiferin derivatives were tested for in vitro antioxidant properties. Benzyl and methyl substituted mangiferin showed poor activity than mangiferin. However, mangiferin derivatives substituted with acetyl and benzoyl groups were showed potent activity than mangiferin in lipid peroxidation, p-NDA, deoxyribose and alkaline DMSO methods. But both the compounds failed to show potent analgesic and anti-inflammatory activities. In all these methods, standard drugs showed better activity than mangiferin and its derivatives. • Anticonvulsant activity of embelin (2.5, 5 and 10 mg/kg, i.p.) was studied. It showed a significant inhibition of the seizures induced by electroshock and pentylenetetrazole in a dose dependent manner and the activity was comparable to phenytoin and diazepam. Significant decrease in locomotion revealing its CNS depressant activity was observed. The findings suggest that embelin possess anticonvulsant activity against both grand mal and petit mal epilepsies. • In the antidiabetic activity, embelin (25 and 50 mg/kg, p.o.) administered orally to alloxan induced diabetic rats for 21 days caused a significant reduction in fasting serum blood glucose levels and significant improvement in body weights. Significant antidiabetic effects were obtained as evident from the restoration of biochemical parameters altered by alloxan towards the normal. Almost normal histological appearance of liver, kidney and pancreas tissues were observed in treated groups. Among the two doses, 50 mg/kg showed better activity. However, the activity was found to be less than the standard glibenclamide given at 10 mg/kg dose. The results showed that embelin has potential hypoglycemic effect along with recovery of liver, kidney and pancreas functions. • In the present study, protective activity of embelin against acetic acid induced colitis was investigated Experimental animals received embelin (25 and 50 mg/kg, p.o.) and sulfasalazine (100 mg/kg, p.o.) for five consecutive days before induction of colitis by intra-rectal acetic acid (3% v/v) administration and the treatment continued upto 7 days. The colonic mucosal injury was assessed by clinical, macroscopic, biochemical and histopathological examination. Embelin treatment significantly decreased clinical activity score, gross lesion score, percent affected area and wet colon weight when compared to acetic acid induced controls. The treatment also reduced significantly the colonic myeloperoxidase activity, lipid peroxides and serum lactate dehydrogenase and significantly increased the reduced glutathione. The histopathological studies also confirmed the above findings. The protective effect may be due to its antioxidant and antiinflammatory activities. • In the neuroprotective activity of embelin, global ischemia and reperfusion were induced by occluding bilateral common carotid arteries for 30 min followed by 24 h reperfusion. Neurological functions were measured by using sensorimotor tests. Ischemia reperfusion induced neuronal injury was assessed by cerebral infarct volume, biochemical and histopathological examination. Pretreatment of embelin (25 and 50 mg/kg, p.o.) significantly increased locomotor activity and hanging latency time and decreased beam walking latency when compared to ischemic control. The treatment also reduced significantly the lipid peroxidation and increased the total thiol and glutathione-S-transferase activity. Cerebral infarction area and histopathological findings also confirmed the above findings. These findings suggested that embelin is a neuroprotective and may prove to be useful adjunct in the treatment of stroke. • In conclusion, in the present study structural modification of two natural products was carried out for structure activity relationship studies. Including sixteen new compounds twenty four derivatives along with a novel embelin-ninhydrin adduct were prepared from embelin. A new and three known mangiferin derivatives were also prepared. All these compounds were characterized by physical and spectral properties. The derivatives of embelin and mangiferin were tested for in vitro antioxidant properties. Some of the derivatives showed potent in vitro antioxidant properties compared to the parent moieties. The potent antioxidant compounds also exhibited potent analgesic and anti-inflammatory activities. Hence, the structural modification of natural compounds played an important role to improve the biological activities. Embelin exhibited potent anticonvulsant properties. It exhibited potent antidiabetic properties in alloxan induced diabetes, protective effect against acetic acid induced colitis and neuroprotective effect against global cerebral ischemia in rats. Hence, new biological properties of embelin were established, which supports the traditional claim of the plant. Further research would be of interest to explain the exact mechanism of the parent compounds and their chemical modifications