Profitability of Cotton on a Pest Management Continuum in Guntur District of Andhra Pradesh

The plant protection response of farmers in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh has been examined with particular reference to the adoption of Bt cotton varieties and IPM components. The farmers have been found to follow a wide range of practices to manage the insect pests in cotton. The use of chemical insecticides has accounted for, about 37 per cent of the total variable costs. No significant reduction in plant protection expenditure has been recorded on adoption of Bt varieties without IPM practices. The adoption of IPM practices, however, has led to reduced use of insecticides and increased profitability. The saving on plant protection chemicals has more than compensated the cost of adopting IPM components. Consequently, the net returns have been found increased considerably from cotton cultivation.Crop Production/Industries,

Finger-Knuckle-Print Verification Based on Band-Limited Phase-Only Correlation

13th International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns, CAIP 2009, Munster, 2-4 September 2009This paper investigates a new automated personal authentication technique using finger-knuckle-print (FKP) imaging. First, a specific data acquisition device is developed to capture the FKP images. The local convex direction map of the FKP image is then extracted, based on which a coordinate system is defined to align the images and a region of interest (ROI) is cropped for feature extraction and matching. To match two FKPs, we present a Band-Limited Phase-Only Correlation (BLPOC) based method to register the images and further to evaluate their similarity. An FKP database is established to examine the performance of the proposed method, and the promising experimental results demonstrated its advantage over the existing finger-back surface based biometric systems.Department of ComputingRefereed conference pape

Genetic analysis of traits contributing to stalk sugar yield in sorghum

Sweet sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) is a potential raw material for production of ethanol that on blending in petrol is expected to meet the energy demand and address the environmental issues. Well-developed hybrid technology will make the crop remunerative to the farmers. Hence, gene action and best combining female and male parents for sugar yield in sweet sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) and the association of sugar yield with other agronomic traits was studied in 171 hybrids developed by crossing 19 female parents with nine male parents in line × tester design and evaluated during both rainy and postrainy seasons of 2006. The significant differences between the seasons for all the traits suggested that these traits are greatly influenced by the environment. The lines (female parents) ICSA 38, ICSA 479, ICSA 702, ICSA 675 and ICSA 474 and the restorers (male parents), SSV 74 and SSV 84 combined well for sugar yield during rainy season and the lines, ICSA 702, ICSA 38 and ICSA 474 and the restorers, ICSV 93046, SPV 1411 and ICSV 700 combined well during postrainy season. The magnitude of SCA variance was higher suggesting the importance of non-additive gene action in inheritance of all the traits though both additive and dominant genes controlled overall sugar yield during both the seasons. Hence, selection in early generation would be ineffective and recurrent selection with periodic intercrossing is advocated. However, breeding good combining restorer parents can fetch high sugar yield in postrainy season. There is an indication of existence of transgressive segregation for sugar yield that can be exploited. The sugar yield was weak though significantly correlated with high brix and poor grain yield during both the seasons requiring extensive crossing to improve these traits simultaneously. Keeping in view mean performance, SCA effects and heterobeltiosis, the hybrids, ICSA 474 × SSV 84, ICSA 24001 × ICSR 93046 and ICSA 474 × SPV 422 were identified promising for rainy season and the hybrids ICSA 24001 × SPV 1411 and ICSA 511 × ICSV 93046 were identified for postrainy season

Perl module and PISE wrappers for the integrated analysis of sequence data and SNP features

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Interrelationship Among Biomass Related Traits and Their Role in Sweet Sorghum Cultivar Productivity in Main and Ratoon Crops

Increased global interest in biofuel feedstocks made sweet sorghum as one of the prominent energy crop suitable for both first and second generation biofuel production. An attempt has been made to critically identify the factors contributing to biomass yield and their interrelationship in sweet sorghum plant (main) and ratoon trials. The genotypes ICSSH 28, ICSSH 58, ICSA 749 × SPV 1411, B-24 and ICSV 93046 exhibited higher ratooning efficiency. It was observed that higher the ratooning efficiency lower will be the difference between the growing degree days (GDD) of main and ratoon crop. GDD can be used as one of the selection criteria in breeding programs aiming for enhanced biomass and ratooning efficiency

study of gene effects for stalk sugar yield and its component traits in sweet sorghum [sorghum bicolor (l.) moench] using generation mean analysis

Generation mean analysis was carried out to estimate the nature and magnitude of gene effects for sugar yield and its component traits in sweet sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench. Six basic generations, namely P1, P2, F1, F2, BC1P1, BC1P2 of four crosses involving seven diverse parents were evaluated in rainy 2009. The mean performance of the F1 in all the crosses indicated dominant gene effect for all the characters. Simple additive-dominance model indicated presence of epistatic interaction. High positive additive × additive interaction effects were found in all the crosses. Higher magnitude of dominance and dominance × dominance gene interactions which were found minimizes the expression of heterosis leading to non-exploitation of crosses with duplicate epistasis. Reciprocal recurrent selection and/or biparental mating in early segregating generations has been suggested for development of high sugar yielding genotypes in view of the genotypes studied

Commercialization: Status and way forward

Ethanol is a biofuel that is used as a fuel additive and a replacement for nearly 3 % of the world’s fossil fuel-based gasoline consumption. Currently, most of the bioethanol is produced from sugarcane in Brazil and corn in the United States, while biodiesel is made from rapeseed in Europe. The rationale for the success of the Brazilian Proalcool program, its present status and its perspectives has been presented. The Proalcool program’s mandate was a vast increase in ethanol production with a sound government-backed subsidies and incentives initially to reach the goal; however, it was the private investors and companies that were solely responsible to achieve the end result. The Proalcool program indeed provides several essential lessons to many countries around the world about the potential competitiveness of biofuels vis-à-vis traditional fuels. Considering the importance of alternate biofuels, sweet sorghum has been identified as a promising energy crop to meet the energy security and reduce the dependence on fossil fuels in many countries around the globe. The Indian National Biofuel Policy (2009) recognizes sweet sorghum as a major biofuel feedstock and well adapted to India. However, its value chain could not get popular as anticipated due to low price level (Rs. 27) fixed by Government of India. Hence, it is necessary to review the ethanol price in India so as to give fillip to the beleaguered biofuel industry, which will likely to play a stabilization role in a oil import dependent economy like ours. Similarly, a number of case studies are presented on the research efforts made in various countries around the world like India, USA, Brazil and China on the use of sweet sorghum as a potential bioenergy feedstock. The current and commercialization status of the various biofuel technologies and approaches are discussed. The biofuel blending targets and mandates of different countries are also presente

Sweet Sorghum: From theory to practice

Sweet sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] is a multipurpose crop (food, feed, fodder and fuel) that has the potential as an alternative biofuel feedstock without impacting food and fodder security. This chapter entitled “Sweet sorghum: From theory to practice” discusses on the historical developments in sweet sorghum and immense range of genetic variability that was available in major sorghum regions of the world. The candidate feedstock characteristic traits of sweet sorghum vis-a-vis other major biofuel feedstocks like sugarcane, corn and sugar beet were compared. Sweet sorghum fares well in many aspects as it is a C4 species with greater resilience to diverse agro-ecologies, low fertilizer and water requirement besides short lifecycle. Hence, many consider it as climate change ready crop; some consider it as miracle crop and few term it as a smart crop. A quantitative insight into the production-ecological sustainability of sweet sorghum biofuel feedstock production systems has been discussed. The ongoing R&D efforts at ICRISAT as well as in National Agricultural Research System (NARS) on sweet sorghum value chain were highlighted. The breeding efforts in Brazil, USA and China on this crop are briefly narrate

Application GGE biplot and AMMI model to evaluate sweet sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) hybrids for genotype x environment interaction and seasonal adaptation

The genotype x environment interaction influences greatly the success of breeding strategy in a multipurpose crop like sweet sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench]. Eleven improved sweet sorghum hybrids were evaluated in both seasons for three years and genotype main effects and genotype x environment interaction (GGE) biplot analysis revealed that the hybrids that performed well in rainy season are: 'ICSSH 24' and 'ICSSH 39' and post rainy season are: 'ICSSH 57' and 'ICSSH 28'. The stable hybrid, based on additive main effects and multiplicative interaction (AMMI) and GGE biplot analysis that performed well across seasons and over the years for grain yield and stalk sugar yield is: 'ICSSH 28'

Innovative use of Sweet sorghum juice in the beverage industry

Sweet sorghum juice, obtained from low water consuming, drought resistant, short duration and seed-propagated sweet sorghum crop, was explored as a source to obtain syrup which can be used as sugar alternative for meeting certain requirements of the beverage industry. Value addition, through conversion of the juice to syrup and beverages, offers farmers an excellent opportunity to improve farm income and productivity in semi arid regions. In this study a new method to produce clarified sweet sorghum juice is demonstrated. The sweet sorghum juice was clarified using pre heating followed by vacuum filtration using a filter aid. The clarified juice was concentrated to syrup with acceptable sensory qualities. Flavoured beverage formulations were optimised using the clarified juice and syrup. Nutritional and sensory properties of the developed beverages showed that the samples were acceptable to the consumers and rated at par with a commercially available beverage. This work has immense industrial and social significance