Issues and Preferences of Horticulture Farmers

A National Farmers Meet (NFM) was organized by Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) at Regional Research Station (RRS), Paiyur, Tamil Nadu on 14.3.2015. The purpose was to sensitize the farmers about improved horticultural production technologies and obtain first-hand information about issues of horticulture farmers of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. A brief survey was conducted at NFM with horticulture farmers as respondents (60) through a structured questionnaire. Analysis of the survey data indicated that Mango, Tomato and Marigold are the major fruit, vegetable and ornamental crops cultivated respectively. Non-availability of critical inputs such as fertilizers, seeds/ planting material and lack of remunerative market price are the major issues in contemporary horticulture, apart from unawareness towards improved horticulture production technologies. Field demonstrations and offcampus training programmes are the two major extension interventions preferred by the horticulture farmers; whereas mass media channels are preferred as information sources apart from institutional sources such as development departments and research institutes. Appropriate extension strategies are suggested based on the findings of the survey

Macrofaunal community inside and outside of the Darwin Mounds Special Area of Conservation, NE Atlantic

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Trade disputes in Great Britain: a brief enquiry into causes of, and an examination of methods of dealing with these, and particularly the experience and possibilities of conciliation and arbitration; and with a reference to Indian labour

We have seen in the first chapter, the general conditions existing in India and in particular the miserable condition of Industrial workers, and it was also shown how India is slowly becoming an Industrial country. In the third and last chapter, we discussed the low standard of life of the Industrial worker and showed how, especially after the war there were constant troubles especially over the demand for advances in wages. It has also been shown that the majority of workers of India are illiteí''ate and semi -agriculturist, and it was pointed out how necessary it is to dispel the mass of ignorance how better wages would enable them to settle permanently in industrial towns. It would be impossible to make them efficient or to increase production, :.o the present low standard of living. It is most important that operatives in India should start organisations on the lines of the Trade Unions of the VIest, not only for presenting a solid front to their employers but for the mutual relief and the common good of their own class. The State, the employers and public- spirited citizens must come forward to assist in the amelioration of their condition. The State can best play a part by introducing compulsory education, which would solve many of the difficulties which we pointed out on account of employing illiterate workers in the industries. Government, central and local should also encourage the building of decent dwelling houses for the working classes. If real efforts were made in these directions, the workers would become more efficient than they are at present. Special manual training and technical education will also act favourably on the economic development of the country. Co-operative Societies should be encouraged so that Indian workers may get cheap and wholesome foodstuffs and the Government should .-raduel ly introduce protective measures to safe -guard the interests of the workers. Factory inspection, rigidly enforcing satisfactory sanitary conditions both in the factories, and in the localities where workers dwell should be introduced. Such ameloriative measures will react very beneficially and will tend to ease the present industrial unrest and thus in- :directly minimise industrial disputes. To my mind, such small concessions will-confer great benefit because the workers can be easily placated. It is much more easy to please Indian workers than workers elsewhere for by nature and upbringing generally makes him be grateful for the little he gets. There is no doubt, that a special responsibility lies upon the employers, who must see that their workers find conditions of work reasonably congenial to them and that they are as: efficient as they can be. The inefficiency of Indian labour is a serious factor which leads to many unhappy results. Employers should realise that efficient labour conduces to increase production and that industries will prosper better and people will be happier in proportion to the degree of the efficiency of labour. As such they should make every attempt to improve their position. The employers should make it a point to start welfare schemes and social service Leagues in every factory. On humanitarian grounds, at least, they should institute free medical aid and sick benefit funds to which the employers should subscribe liberally. There are some such schemes in many places but they should be made general rather than the exception. The employers should also introduce provident and pension funds. Every ameliorative measure should be. adopted to raise the workers from their present bad state and if necessary the Government should make these obligatory

Proximity Effects in Radiative Transfer

Though the dependence of near-field radiative transfer on the gap between two planar objects is well understood, that between curved objects is still unclear. We show, based on the analysis of the surface polariton mediated radiative transfer between two spheres of equal radii $R$ and minimum gap $d$, that the near--field radiative transfer scales as $R/d$ as $d/R \rightarrow 0$ and as $\ln(R/d)$ for larger values of $d/R$ up to the far--field limit. We propose a modified form of the proximity approximation to predict near--field radiative transfer between curved objects from simulations of radiative transfer between planar surfaces.Comment: 5 journal pages, 4 figure

First-Fit is Linear on Posets Excluding Two Long Incomparable Chains

A poset is (r + s)-free if it does not contain two incomparable chains of size r and s, respectively. We prove that when r and s are at least 2, the First-Fit algorithm partitions every (r + s)-free poset P into at most 8(r-1)(s-1)w chains, where w is the width of P. This solves an open problem of Bosek, Krawczyk, and Szczypka (SIAM J. Discrete Math., 23(4):1992--1999, 2010).Comment: v3: fixed some typo

Microplastics and synthetic particles ingested by deep-sea amphipods in six of the deepest marine ecosystems on Earth

Funding Funding for the laboratory work and analysis was from Newcastle University internal support. This work was supported by the 2007–2010 HADEEP project, funded by the Nippon Foundation (2009765188) and the Natural Environmental Research Council (NE/E007171/1). The 2011–2013 Kermadec Trench sampling was supported by the TOTAL Foundation (France) through the projects ‘Multi-disciplinary investigations of the deepest scavengers on Earth’ (2010–2012) and ‘Trench Connection’ (2013–2015). The Mariana samples were derived from the ‘FISH2017’ expedition (RV Shinyo-Maru SY1615) supported by the Tokyo University for Marine Science and Technology. Acknowledgements We thank the captain, crew and company of the research expeditions who assisted in the collection of the amphipods between 2008 and 2017, namely the Japanese Hakuho-Maru, Tansei Maru and Shinyo-Maru, the German Sonne and the RV Kaharoa in New Zealand. The assistance of David Whitaker and Peter McParlin from The School of Marine Science and Technology at Newcastle University are much appreciated. We are extremely grateful to Bob Keighley and Dan Parnaby at Shimadzu UK Limited for facilitating the FTIR analysis and access to their material database. We also thank Heather Stewart from the British Geological Survey for calculating the distances between trenches.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Occurrence and distribution of black pod rot of Cocoa (Theobromae cocoa L.) in southern transition zone of Karnataka

Straminipile genus Phytophthora cause significant disease losses to global cocoa production. Phytopthtora palmivora is one of the major constraints in cocoa production causes significant pod losses. P. palmivora has a complex disease cycle involving several sources of primary inoculum and several modes of dissemination of secondary inoculum. This results in explosive epidemics during favorable environmental conditions. Highest severity of Seedling blight was observed in raised bed nurseries as compared to poly bag nurseries in Shivamogga district (59.26%) followed by Chikkamagluru (53.85%) of the state Karnataka , respectively. Further, the highest incidence of 72.00, 70.83 and 70.00% of black pod rot disease was recorded in Udupi, Dakshina Kannada and Shivamogga district followed by Chikkamagaluru (65.22%), Kodagu (64.00%) and Davanagere (55.56%) district respectively. Due to continuous rain fall or high moisture conditions and the crop was grown as intercrop with arecanut is vulnerable for the attack of pathogen due to the presence of pathogenic variability

An Overview on Pashanabedha Medicinal Plants

One of the major kidney diseases that needs a well-targeted therapeutic approach is urolithiasis. For the treatment of lithiasis, a number of medications are available, including diuretics and stone inhibitors, however clinical examination of these medications has revealed a frequency of relapses, adverse effects, and drug interactions. This has served as the justification for the development of new antilithiatic medications, and the hunt for novel molecules has now included herbal medications that provide superior defence and lower relapse rates. Plant-based medications are becoming more popular and are being researched for a variety of illnesses, including lithiasis. A set of medicinal plants known as pashanabheda (literally, ”stonesolving”) are utilised by Ayurvedic doctors in India as anti-urolithiatic medications. The present article reviews the antilithiatic activity of some of the medicinal plants. Here attempt is made to review a few medicinal plants with documented anti-urolithiatic action. In this study, some of the significant plants noted for their antilithiatic effects have been highlighted. Keywords: Urolithiatic; AntiUrolithiatic; Maceration; Turbidimetry; Calcium Oxalat

Detection of Glutathione S-Transferase gene (GST2, GST3) during induction of somatic embryogenesis in grape (Vitis vinifera L.)

Glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) are an important group of multifunctional enzymes that belong to diverse multigene families. In plants these enzymes are involved in the detoxification of xenobiotic compounds, herbicide detoxification, and primary and secondary metaboplism and play an important role in plant growth and development. There are several reports that show that the expression of GST is linked to the developmental phases of somatic embryogenesis. This study highlights the detection of transcript abundances of glutathione S-transferase genes GST2 and GST3 in the process of somatic embryogenesis of Vitis vinifera, and the lack thereof in non-embryogenic tissue of leaf cultures of grape (control). These results indicate that the expression of GST2 and GST3 could be used as a molecular signal for the identification of embryogenic cultures during the early development of somatic embryos