Pattern of Agricultural Diversification in India

Agricultural diversification as measured by increase in the percent of non-food crops has grown; whereas diversification as measured by the concentration indices has remained unchanged in the recent decade. There have been significant changes in the pattern of agricultural diversification at the regional level. Within a region, smaller sub-regions or pockets of specialization in certain crops and crop-groups have emerged. Farms do not remain diversified and the usual notion of crop diversification as a risk management practice is also belied in the present study. The study also found certain kind of structural changes in all sub-sectors of agriculture : crop, livestock, and fisheries. Concerns over extreme effects of such changes are however, not valid.agricultural diversification, Agriculture Analysis, India, non-food crops, crop, livestock, and fisheries

Drivers of Agricultural Diversification in India, Haryana and the Greenbelt Farms of India

The present study discusses factors responsible for agricultural diversification at different levels : country (India), state (Haryana) and farms of Kurukshetra district in Haryana. The study regressed alternate measures of diversification namely, the Simpson index and concentration of non-food crops, on several possible factors such as income, land distribution, irrigation intensity, institutional credit, road density, urbanization and market penetration. The regression analysis suggests that increased road density, urbanization encourages commercialization of agriculture and with commercialization, farms in a region are increasingly specialized under certain crops and crop-groups as per the resource, infrastructure and institutions of the region.agricultural diversification, agriculture, India, Haryana

Impact of hydrostatic pressure on superconductivity of Sr0.5La0.5FBiS2

We report the impact of hydrostatic pressure (0-1.97GPa) on superconductivity of recently discovered 2K superconductor Sr0.5La0.5FBiS2. Resistivity under pressure measurements are performed by using HPC-33 Piston type pressure cell with Quantum design DC resistivity Option. The superconducting transition temperature (Tc) is increased by 5 fold to around 10K with just above 1GPa pressure, which remains nearly unaltered for studied higher pressures of up to 1.97GPa. The fivefold increase in Tc of Sr0.5La0.5FBiS2 with just above 1GPa pressure suggests very strong electron correlations in these systems and the same calls for the attention of solid state physics community.Comment: 11 pages text + Figs: Five fold increase in Tc with Just above 1GP

Magnetotransport studies of FeSe under hydrostatic pressure

The discoveries of iron-based superconductors with relatively high transition temperature are under intense experimental and theoretical investigation. Here we present magnetotransport measurements on FeSe superconductor under hydrostatic pressure. We show that in Fe-deficient tetragonal FeSe binary compound, the onset of superconducting transition is almost doubled under 1.98GPa pressure and the estimated upper critical field of 26.7Tesla is increased to 47.5Tesla.Comment: Short MS: 8 pages Text + Figs. Pressure induced increase in Tc and pinnin

Hydrostatic Pressure Studies on Parent Phase SrFBiS2 of BiS2-based Superconducting Family

In the present work, we measure the temperature dependent electrical resistivity from 300K down to 2K under applied hydrostatic pressure of upto 2.5GPa for SrFBiS2, which is the parent compound for the BiS2 based superconductors. Though the normal state resistivity of the compound decreases with pressure, the same is not superconducting down to 2K under applied pressure of up to 2.5Gpa.Comment: 4 pages text + Figs. First report related to pressure effect on SrFBiS

Appearance of bulk Superconductivity under Hydrostatic Pressure in Sr0.5RE0.5FBiS2 (RE = Ce, Nd, Pr and Sm) compounds

We report the appearance of superconductivity under hydrostatic pressure (0.35 to 2.5GPa) in Sr0.5RE0.5FBiS2 with RE = Ce, Nd, Pr and Sm. The studied compounds, synthesized by solid state reaction route, are crystallized in tetragonal P4/nmm space group. At ambient pressure though the RE = Ce exhibit the onset of superconductivity below 2.5K, the Nd, Pr and Sm samples are not superconducting down to 2K. With application of hydrostatic pressure (up to 2.5GPa), superconducting transition temperature is increased to around 10K for all the studied samples. The magneto-transport measurements are carried out on all the samples with maximum Tc i.e., at under 2.5GPa pressure and their upper critical fields are determined. The new superconducting compounds appear to be quite robust against magnetic field but within Pauli paramagnetic limit. The new superconducting compounds with various RE (Ce, Nd, Pr and Sm) belonging to Sr0.5La0.5FBiS2 family are successfully synthesized for the first time and superconductivity is induced in them under hydrostatic pressure.Comment: 17 pages text + Figs: First report on Sr0.5(Ce/Nd/Pr/Sm)0.5FBiS2 new compounds superconducting under pressur

Specific heat of robust Nb2PdS5 superconductor

We report specific heat under different magnetic fields for recently discovered quasi-one dimensional Nb2PdS5 superconductor. The studied compound is superconducting below 6 K. Nb2PdS5 is quite robust against magnetic field with dHc/dT of -42 kOe/K. The estimated upper critical field [Hc2(0)] is 190 kOe, clearly surpassing the Pauli-paramagnetic limit of 1.84Tc. Low temperature heat capacity in superconducting state of Nb2PdS5 under different magnetic fields showed s-wave superconductivity with two different gaps. Two quasi-linear slopes in Somerfield-coefficient as a function of applied magnetic field and two band behavior of the electronic heat capacity demonstrate that Nb2PdS5 is a multiband su-perconductor in weak coupling limit with deltagamma/deltaTc=0.9.Comment: 4 pages text Figs. Short Letter MS. Letter-J. Sup. & Novel Ma

PdTe a 4.5K Type II BCS Superconductor

We report on the structure and physical properties of bulk Palladium Tellurium superconductor, which is synthesized via quartz vacuum encapsulation technique at 750 C. The as synthesized compound is crystallized in hexagonal crystal structure. Magnetization and Magneto-transport measurements provided the values of lower and upper critical field to be 250 and 1200 Gauss respectively at 2 Kelvin. The Coherence length and GL parameter are estimated from the experimentally determined upper and lower critical fields, which are 45 nm and 1.48 respectively. The jump in Cp(T) at Tc is found to be 1.33 and the Debye temperature and electronic specific heat constant are 203 Kelvin and 6.01mJ/mole-K2 respectively.Comment: 13 pages Text + Figs: Accepted in Sup. Sci. and Tec

Role of MgO impurity on the superconducting properties of MgB2

We address the effect of MgO impurity on the superconducting properties of MgB2. The synthesis of MgB2 is very crucial because of sensitivity of Mg to oxidation which may lead to MgO as a secondary phase. Rietveld refinement was performed to determine the quantitative volume fraction of MgO in the samples synthesized by two different techniques. Both the samples were subjected to magnetization measurements under dc and ac applied magnetic fields and the observed results were compared as a function of temperature. Paramagnetic Meissner effect has been observed in a sample of MgB2 having more amount of MgO (with Tc = 37.1K) whereas the pure sample MgB2 having minor quantity of MgO shows diamagnetic Meissner effect with Tc = 38.8K. M-H measurements at 10K reveal a slight difference in irreversibility field which is due to MgO impurity along with wide transition observed from ac magnetic susceptibility measurements. The magnetotransport measurements R(T)H using RN = 90%, 50% and 10% criterion on pure sample of MgB2 has been used to determine the upper critical field whereas the sample having large quantity of MgO does not allow these measurements due to its high resistance.Comment: 15 pages text + Fig