Genetic diversity of farmer-preferred cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp) landraces in Turkey and evaluation of their relationships based on agromorphological traits

Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp) is one of the important vegetable, grain, and fodder legume species grown in the tropics and subtropics. Cowpea is grown on small farms, and locally adapted landraces or populations are cultivated, and genetic improvements are limited by the lack of knowledge of genetic diversity of the indigenous and cultivated germplasm. Characterization and classification of diversity of the germplasm is valuable for both plant breeders and germplasm curators in the development of conservation strategies and identification of plant genetic resources. In the present study, 36 qualitative and quantitative agromorphological traits were used to characterize and assess the genetic diversity of 32 farmer preferred cowpea genotypes collected from diverse cultivated locations. Genetic variation was highly significant, and phenotypic diversity was observed for agromorphological traits. Agromorphological traits were classified by principal components analysis (PCA) into 10 components, which explained 81.18% of the total variation. PCA revealed that seed properties such as weight, diameter, width, length, eye color and immature pod pigmentation, leaf and pod color properties were the primary characteristics to discriminate cowpea genotypes. The hierarchical analysis grouped the genotypes into five clusters, and significant association was not apparent between geographic origin and agromorphological traits. The promising germplasm was identified to improve the landraces for fresh pod, grain, and fodder

Efficiency analysis of dairy buffalo enterprises in Catalca district of Istanbul

The purpose of this study is to determine the efficiencies and economic situations of dairy buffalo enterprises in Catalca district of Istanbul. Research material was collected by means of a questionnaire from 32 enterprises, determined by purposive sampling method in 2013 production periods. According to calculations made per buffalo milked in enterprises, the shares of expenses for feed, labour, veterinary-health, electricity-water, maintenance and repairment, depreciation, general administration and other things in total expenses consist of 54.23%, 25.87%, 1.77%, 2.62%, 1.98%), 10.15%, 2.56% and 0.83% respectively. The average benefit/cost ratio for enterprises was found to be 1.27, whereas the unit cost of milk was 3.31 TL. The measurement of the efficiencies was realized by data envelopment analysis. In this analysis, input and output oriented CCR model with 3 outputs and 5 inputs was adopted. Milk-revenue, calf-revenue and increase in inventory were included in the analysis as outputs and feeding expense, whereas labor-force, veterinary and health expense, depriciation and electricity-water expenses as inputs. At the end, potential improvements that could be advised for inefficient enterprises were determined. The rations of efficient and inefficient enterprises were found 53% and 47% respectively. The factors that affected efficiency score were modeled by regression analysis. Increase in inventory, labor cost were determined to be two influential factors on efficiency (p < 0.05)

Legislative Documents

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