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

Studies on Marketing of Flower Cultivation under Polyhouses in Chittor District of Andhra Pradesh, India

Flower industry is an emerging as a blooming business not only in India, but in other countries as well. Floriculture denotes cultivation of flowers, developing new varieties of commercial value, sale of flowers as raw commodities, processing, distribution, etc. for the local and international market. This paper attempted to to analyse the different marketing channels of flower cultivation under polyhouse in chittor district of Andhra Pradesh. This study was carried out based on primary data and interviewed with 30 flower growers and seller in chittor district. Three channels were identified namely channel I: Farmer -Wholesaler-Trader -Retailer -Consumer, Channel - II: Farmer -wholesaler -retailer-consumer and Channel-III: Farmer -wholesaler -consumer. With regard to marigold in channel – I, the net share of the producer in the consumer’s rupee was 40 per cent and price spread Rs.65 and marketing efficiency 0.66, whereas, in chrysanthemum, the net share of the producer in the consumer’s rupee is 48 per cent and marketing efficiency 0.90. With regard to marigold in channel – II, the net share of the producer in the consumer’s rupee was 45 per cent and price received by the farmer was Rs.43 per kg of the produce from the wholesaler and the wholesaler was selling at a price of Rs.64 per kg to the retailer. The final purchase price of the consumer was Rs.96 price spread Rs.43 and marketing efficiency 0.81. In case of chrysanthemum, the net share of the producer in the consumer’s rupee was 51 per cent and marketing efficiency 1.05. The producer’s share in the consumer’s rupee was 55 per cent for marigold in channel – III, price spread was Rs.35 and marketing efficiency was 1.22, while, in case of chrysanthemum, the net share of the producer in the consumer’s rupee was 64 per cent, marketing efficiency 1.76. . Channel - III was having the highest efficiency among all the channels but mostly used channel was channel – II

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

Not Available

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

Study of Soil Nutrient Status of Doddavaram Microwatershed in Koyyuru Mandal of Visakhapatnam District, Andhra Pradesh, India

Aims: To asses the fertility status of the soils of Doddavaram microwatershed of Koyyuru mandal of Visakhapatnam district, Andhra Pradesh in which twenty soil profiles were studied for soil physico-chemical properties (pH, EC, OC) and soil nutrient status (N, P2O5, K2O, Zn, Cu, Fe and Mn). Study Design:  The soil  profiles were selected based on the slope and its heterogeneity Place and Duration of Study: Doddavaram microwatershed of Koyyuru mandal of Visakhapatnam district, Andhra Pradesh located in between 17° 38' 4.779" to 17° 42' 15.440" of North latitudes and 82° 10' 56.784" to 82° 15' 1.372"East  longitudes Methodology: Preliminary traverse of the entire watershed was carried out using 1:10,000 scale base map and satellite imagery. After delineating the landform on the satellite image, intensive traversing of each landform was undertaken to select the representative areas for transect study based on geology, drainage pattern, surface features, slope characteristics and land use, landforms and physiographic divisions. Transects were located across the slope at right angles to the contours and covers most of the variations observed in a landform. In each selected transect, profiles were located at closely spaced intervals to take care of any change in the land features like break in slope, erosion, gravels and stones etc . In this way totally twenty (20) soil profiles were opened and soil samples were collected and analyzed in the laboratory for soil nutrient status. Results: The results revealed that the soils of Doddavaram microwatershed were very strongly acidic to slightly alkaline (4.58 to 7.82) in reaction, non-saline (0.02 to 0.17 dS m-1), low to high (0.10 to 0.78%) in organic carbon. Moreover, these soils were low to medium in available nitrogen (28.30 to 147.14 mg kg-1), available phosphorus (2.19 to 14.78 mg kg-1 P2O5) and available potassium (27.63 to 117.44 mg kg-1 soil). The available sulphur content in the soils varied from deficient (1.41 mg kg-1) to sufficient (20.83 mg kg-1 soil). The surface horizons of pedons 1,2,9,10,11,13,14,15,16,1718,19 and 20 were sufficient in DTPA extractable zinc, while the pedons 3,4,5,6,7,8 and 12 showed deficient levels in the surface horizons. Moreover, the zinc concentration in the sub-surface horizons was sufficient to deficient. The surface and sub-surface horizons of all the pedons in the study area of Doddavaram microwatershed were found to be sufficient in DTPA extractable copper, iron and manganese and found to be above the critical limits. Conclusion: The analysis of macronutrients in the soils of Doddavaram microwatershed of Koyyuru mandal of Visakhapatnam district revealed that soils are low to medium in available nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium and deficient to sufficient in available sulphur. soils of the microwatershed were deficient to sufficient in available Zn and sufficient in available Fe, Cu and Mn