15 research outputs found
Molecular breeding tools improved drought tolerant groundnut variety for resistance to foliar fungal diseases
A largely rainfed crop in India, drought tolerance, particularly
mid- and end-season tolerance, is a key trait in groundnut
varieties. A combination of both empirical and trait-based
approaches was used in breeding programs of ICAR and ICRISAT,
resulting in release of few tolerant varieties that have
superior pod yield under drought stress and/or have enhanced
water-use-efficiency. There is a need to breed varieties with
drought tolerance, disease resistance and quality traits that suit
different production ecologies as well as meet the needs of the
farmers, consumers and industries. ICRISAT has released an
early-maturing (90-95 d) and drought- tolerant variety ICGV
91114 for the drought-prone Ananthapur district of Andhra
Pradesh, India, where about 0.7 m ha area is under groundnut
cultivation and has low (300 mm) and erratic (30-40 rainy
days) rainfall. On-farm studies conducted with ICGV 91114
during 2008-10 showed 30% reduction in yield variability over
the years. Following screening in hot-spots of both rust and LLS
disease during 2014 rainy season, a total of 27 introgression
lines derived from ICGV 91114 were selected and advanced for
evaluation in multi-location trials at six locations in 2015 under
rainfed conditions. Based on the pod yield under rainfed conditions
and disease resistance, three superior introgression lines
(ICGV 14410, ICGV 13189, ICGV 14421) were proposed for the
first-ever NILs trial (near-isogenic lines trial) along with eight
others conducted under All India Coordinated Research Project
on Groundnut (AICRP-G) at national level
Speech Recognition Performance in Children with Cochlear Implants Using Bimodal Stimulation
Cochlear implantees have considerably good speech understanding abilities in quiet surroundings. But, ambient noise poses significant difficulties in understanding speech for these individuals. Bimodal stimulation is still not used by many Indian implantees in spite of reports that bimodal stimulation is beneficial for speech understanding in noise as compared to cochlear implant alone and also prevents auditory deprivation in the un-implanted ear. The aim of the study is to evaluate the benefits of bimodal stimulation in children in an Indian cochlear implant clinic. A group of 14 children who have been using cochlear implants served as subjects in this study. They were fitted with advanced digital hearing aids in their un-implanted ears to provide bimodal stimulation. Results revealed that bimodal stimulation did not bring greater change in speech scores in quiet surroundings but have shown a noticeable improvement in noisy ambience. Hence the present study suggests that bimodal stimulation would benefit children with cochlear implants especially in adverse listening conditions