Influence of farming systems on management of major pests and disease of groundnut

A field experiment was conducted during the summer 2019 to manage significant pests and diseases of groundnut. Four farming methods were evaluated against Aphis craccivora, Scirtothrips dorsalis, Spodoptera litura andearly leaf spot (Cercospora arachidicola). Among the different farming methods, Natural farming (NF) (neemastra @ 625 lit/ha) significantly reduced the Aphis craccivora (3.92 aphids /plant) and Scirtothrips dorsalis (11.80%) at one week after spray followed by organic farming (OF) and a package of practice (POP). Similarly, S. litura (0.44 % leaf damage) infestation was significantly lower at two weeks after spray compared to other treatments. Botanical decoctions were found safer to Coccinella transversalis in natural farming plot. The experiment also evaluated the effective farming methods against early leaf spot of groundnut and among the different methods, the minimum per cent disease index (6.26) was recorded in POP (hexaconazole 5EC @ 500ml/ha) followed by OF (azadirachtin 10000 ppm @ 600ml/ha) (7.02) and NF (fermented buttermilk @ 12.50 lit/ha) (7.19). All the farming methods were statistically at par in recording pod yield however, the highest pod yield was recorded in POP (20.07 q/ha) followed by organic farming (19.50 q/ha). The present investigation has found natural farming to be an effective system against the management of pests and disease in groundnut

USHA: unified software and hardware architecture for video decoding

Video decoders used in emerging applications need to be flexible to handle a large variety of video formats and deliver scalable performance to handle wide variations in workloads. In this paper we propose a unified software and hardware architecture for video decoding to achieve scalable performance with flexibility. The light weight processor tiles and the reconfigurable hardware tiles in our architecture enable software and hardware implementations to co-exist, while a programmable interconnect enables dynamic interconnection of the tiles. Our process network oriented compilation flow achieves realization agnostic application partitioning and enables seamless migration across uniprocessor, multi-processor, semi hardware and full hardware implementations of a video decoder. An application quality of service aware scheduler monitors and controls the operation of the entire system. We prove the concept through a prototype of the architecture on an off-the-shelf FPGA. The FPGA prototype shows a scaling in performance from QCIF to 1080p resolutions in four discrete steps. We also demonstrate that the reconfiguration time is short enough to allow migration from one configuration to the other without any frame loss

Comparative studies of conventional, organic and natural farming types for their efficiency, and productivity in maize + red gram intercropping system

The field experiment on comparative studies of different farming methods for their efficiency and productivity in maize + redgram intercropping system was conducted at zonal agricultural and horticultural research station, Bhavikere during Kharif season. Among the different farming types, growth and yield parameters of maize viz. plant height (204.18 cm) number of leaves/ plant (17.20), cob length (15.94cm), straw yield (19.35 t/ ha) grain yield (81.36 q/ ha) and red gram Grain yield (4.36 q/ ha) and straw yield (11.19 q/ ha) were significantly higher with treatment received nutrients as per package of practices as compared to natural farming and organic farming treatments. Similar trend was observed with maize equivalent yield (95.50 q/ ha). On the other hand, highest dehydrogenase (14.32, 28.65, 24.19 and 16.23 µg TPF/ g soil/ day) and urease (4.12, 12.65, 7.14 and 3.32 µg NH4-N/ g / soil/ 2 hrs) enzyme activity was observed in organic farming treatment at 30, 60, 90 DAS and at harvest, respectively followed by natural farming treatment and least enzyme activity was noticed in farmers practice. Same trend was observed in acid and alkaline phosphatase enzyme activities. There was no much variation in physical properties i.e., bulk density, particle density, maximum water holding capacity and porosity by the different treatments and also no significant difference occurs in the pH and EC, however higher nitrogen (315.27) phosphorus (73.48) and potassium (271.28) was observed in the organic farming treatment and it was followed with the farmer’s practice treatment. The lowest was recorded in the natural farming treatment (215.47, 33.47 and 220.47 at the harvest stage)

An Input Triggered Polymorphic ASIC for H.264 Decoding

This paper reports the design of an input-triggered polymorphic ASIC for H.264 baseline decoder. Hardware polymorphism is achieved by selectively reusing hardware resources at system and module level. Complete design is done using ESL design tools following a methodology that maintains consistency in testing and verification throughout the design flow. The proposed design can support frame sizes from QCIF to 1080p