Concentrate feeding to dairy cattle in India: Practices and implications for Indian dairy industry

The shaping of agriculture and allied sectors is possible as a result of research and development (R&D) efforts by offering new ideas, innovations, products and technologies. However, it is also observed that majority of the technologies developed by scientists are irrelevant and inappropriate for field conditions leading to poor diffusion and adoption. This issue is also aggravated by the fact that there is poor linkage of research-extension and farmers. With this theoretical background, the present study has focused on the ground realities or practices, perception of multi-stakeholders viz. dairy farmers, scientists and extensionists about concentrate feeds and has proposed certain policy implications for Indian dairy industry. The study included 360 dairy farmers, 80 research scientists and 40 extensionists in India. The primary data was collected by both qualitative and quantitative method using interview schedule, questionnaire, focus group discussion and observation method. The study revealed that scientists and extension experts were more favourable towards relevance, profitability and sustainability of concentrate feeds, while the perception of farmers was less favourable towards concentrate feeds. The study also observed that there was a wide gap (higher per cent gap) among farmers-scientists and farmers-extensionists with regards to relevance, profitability and sustainability of concentrate feeds, while the gap was very narrow among scientists and extensionists. Hence, the study concluded that scientists have to generate and transfer field relevant, profitable and sustainable dairy innovations for higher diffusion and adoption at field conditions. The study also recommends to involve farmers as the partners of research and extension for effective generation and transfer of dairy innovations leading to higher productivity in Indian dairy sector

Phytochemical investigation and cytotoxic activity of hydro alcoholic fraction of Trianthema decandra

193-203The objective of our study was to perform phytochemical analysis and evaluate for cytotoxic activity of hydro alcoholic fraction (H1) of Trianthema decandra L. (Aizoaceae) against breast, liver and cervical cancers. Hydro alcoholic fraction was separated from methanolic extract, which was prepared by maceration method from aerial parts of T. decandra The GC-MS analysis confirms the presence of seventeen bioactive compounds which belongs to carbohydrates, terpenoids, alkaloids, cardiac glycosides, fatty acids and their esters or alcohols, and their presence were supported with Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) and preliminary phytochemical analysis. Most of the compounds are biologically active and are known to exhibit antimicrobial and cancer preventive properties. Hydro alcoholic fraction was subjected to morphological evaluation and MTT cell viability assay. It has exhibited significant cytotoxic activity and their IC50 values were determined as 165.22 + 1.53 mg/ml, 175.28 + 1.7 mg/ml and 201.93 + 1.33 mg/ml against MCF-7, HeLa and HepG2 cancer cells, respectively. This bioactive fraction has exhibited cytotoxicity relatively more against breast cancer than cervical and liver cancers

Molecular surveillance of dengue virus in field-collected Aedes mosquitoes from Bhopal, central India: evidence of circulation of a new lineage of serotype 2

IntroductionDengue fever is hyperendemic in several Southeast and South Asian countries, including India, with all four serotypes (DENV 1–4) circulating at different periods and in different locations. Sustainable and improved virological and entomological surveillance is the only tool to prevent dengue and other vector-borne diseases.ObjectivesThe present study has been carried out to detect and characterize the circulating dengue virus (DENV) in field-collected Aedes mosquitoes in Bhopal, Central India.MethodsAedes mosquitoes were collected from 29 localities within Bhopal city during October 2020 to September 2022. DENV infection was assessed in the individual head and thorax regions of Aedes mosquitoes using reverse transcriptase PCR. Positive samples were sequenced, and the circulating serotypes and genotypes were determined using phylogenetic analysis.ResultsDENV RNA was detected in 7 Aedes aegypti and 1 Aedes albopictus, with infection rates of 0.59 and 0.14%, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis revealed all the isolates belonged to DENV serotype 2 and distinctly clustered with the non-Indian lineage (cosmopolitan genotype 4a), which was not recorded from the study area earlier. The time to most common recent ancestor (TMRCA) of these sequences was 7.4 years old, with the highest posterior density (HPD) of 3.5–12.2 years, indicating that this new lineage emerged during the year 2014. This is the first report on the DENV incrimination in both Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus mosquitoes collected from Bhopal, Central India.ConclusionThe observed emergence of the non-Indian lineage of DENV-2 in Bhopal, which again is a first report from the area, coincides with the gradual increase in DENV cases in Bhopal since 2014. This study emphasizes the importance of DENV surveillance and risk assessment in this strategically important part of the country to decipher its outbreak and severe disease-causing potential

Forecasting maize yield using ARIMA-Genetic Algorithm approach

Maize is widely cultivated throughout the world and has highest production among all the cereals. India is the sixth largest producer of maize in the world, contributing 2% of global production and accounting for 9% of the total food grain production in the country. Based on increasing growth rates of poultry, livestock, fish, and milling industries, the demand for maize is expected to increase from the current level of 17 to 45 million tons by 2030. To understand the growing pattern and economics of crop production, it is necessary to predict crop yield using statistical models and geographic information system soil mapping and the impacts of insect and pest damage. In this study, the focus was to forecast maize yield in India using an autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model and genetic algorithm (GA) approach. GA simulates the evolution of living organisms, where the fittest individual dominates the weaker ones by mimicking the biological mechanism of evolution, such as selection, crossover, and mutation. GA has successfully been applied to solve optimization problems. The study reveals that implementation of GA in ARIMA enhances the prediction accuracy of the model.ICA

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Not AvailableClimate change and its effects have become a burning issue of today's era. The anthropogenic activities have created many impacts on environment and on our crop plants. Crop plants are facing the problems they had never seen before. These problems are prominently water scarcity, drought, water logging, salinity, increasing temperature, terminal seasonal heat etc. Plant breeder's role is becoming very important in developing crop varieties suitable for climate resilient agriculture, understanding the genetics of novel traits, utilizing the crop germplasm which are still on breeders' shelf, and understanding the physiology of crops. Plant breeders can use crop germplasm, crop wild relatives, underutilized crops, potential plants to be developed as crops to tackle the impacts of climate change and help the farmers to feed the ever-growing population. Utilization of novel plant breeding tools such as marker assisted selection, genomic selection, transgenic, genome editing, allele mining etc. will augment the conventional plant breeding of future. Accelerated crop domestication has emerged as a new way to widen the scope of crop plants for growing demand and divergent needs of future generations. Future of plant breeding will be supplemented with the advancement of extensive, accurate, ef cient and non-invasive phenotyping. The plant breeding will be assisted in future with phenomics, arti cial intelligence, Internet of Things, Machine learning and Big data analysis.Not Availabl

Not Available

Not AvailableClimate change and its effects have become a burning issue of today's era. The anthropogenic activities have created many impacts on environment and on our crop plants. Crop plants are facing the problems they had never seen before. These problems are prominently water scarcity, drought, water logging, salinity, increasing temperature, terminal seasonal heat etc. Plant breeder's role is becoming very important in developing crop varieties suitable for climate resilient agriculture, understanding the genetics of novel traits, utilizing the crop germplasm which are still on breeders' shelf, and understanding the physiology of crops. Plant breeders can use crop germplasm, crop wild relatives, underutilized crops, potential plants to be developed as crops to tackle the impacts of climate change and help the farmers to feed the ever-growing population. Utilization of novel plant breeding tools such as marker assisted selection, genomic selection, transgenic, genome editing, allele mining etc. will augment the conventional plant breeding of future. Accelerated crop domestication has emerged as a new way to widen the scope of crop plants for growing demand and divergent needs of future generations. Future of plant breeding will be supplemented with the advancement of extensive, accurate, efcient and non-invasive phenotyping. The plant breeding will be assisted in future with phenomics, articial intelligence, Internet of Things, Machine learning and Big data analysis.Not Availabl