Magna Carta, the Rule of Law and the Limits on Government

This paper surveys the legal tradition that links Magna Carta with the modern concepts of the rule of law and the limits on government. It documents that the original understanding of the rule of law included substantive commitments to individual freedom and limited government. Then, it attempts at explaining how and why such commitments were lost to a formalist interpretation of the rule of law from 1848 to 1939. The paper concludes by arguing how a revival of the substantive commitments of the rule of law is central in a project of reshaping modern states

Chickpea

The narrow genetic base of cultivated chickpea warrants systematic collection, documentation and evaluation of chickpea germplasm and particularly wild Cicer species for effective and efficient use in chickpea breeding programmes. Limiting factors to crop production, possible solutions and ways to overcome them, importance of wild relatives and barriers to alien gene introgression and strategies to overcome them and traits for base broadening have been discussed. It has been clearly demonstrated that resistance to major biotic and abiotic stresses can be successfully introgressed from the primary gene pool comprising progenitor species. However, many desirable traits including high degree of resistance to multiple stresses that are present in the species belonging to secondary and tertiary gene pools can also be introgressed by using special techniques to overcome pre- and post-fertilization barriers. Besides resistance to various biotic and abiotic stresses, the yield QTLs have also been introgressed from wild Cicer species to cultivated varieties. Status and importance of molecular markers, genome mapping and genomic tools for chickpea improvement are elaborated. Because of major genes for various biotic and abiotic stresses, the transfer of agronomically important traits into elite cultivars has been made easy and practical through marker-assisted selection and marker-assisted backcross. The usefulness of molecular markers such as SSR and SNP for the construction of high-density genetic maps of chickpea and for the identification of genes/QTLs for stress resistance, quality and yield contributing traits has also been discussed

Ratoon cropping

Ratoon cropping is an old system that has been practiced for many years, especially in the Tropics. Although the origin of ratooning is probably not known for any particular crop, it may have begun when man first noticed the regrowth of new shoots following the cutting of certain crops at harvest, thus, producing a new crop without replanting. Because ratooning is practiced widely and is important in many crops, a review of the practice may be valuable, especially because increased food and fiber production is imperative in tropical areas. With hand-harvesting it is usually possible to obtain several ratoon crops, and growing and maintaining good ratoons is very important. Ratoon cropping is also practiced to some degree in the following commercial crops: kodra millet in India, ramie, and various grasses used for essential oils, especially the genus Cymbopogon. In many of the major crops examined, evidence has been found to support the view that under certain conditions, yields of ratooned crops such as sugarcane, cotton, bananas, and forage sorghum have shown no decline over a reasonably long period. Over shorter periods of one or two rations, no yield decline has been recorded in grain sorghum, cotton, pineapple, and other crops