Impact of MGNREGA on Input-use Pattern, Labour Productivity and Returns of Selected Crops in Gulbarga District, Karnataka

The study has tried to capture the effect of MGNREGA by selecting two sets of villages in the Gulbarga district of Karnataka, one which have utilized 75 per cent of allocated funds and the other which have utilized less the 25 per cent of allocated funds under MGNREGA. The study is based on primary data obtained from 120 sample farmers belonging to five village panchayats. In redgram, a significant difference has been observed in use of machine power and labour use between fully and partially-implemented MGNREGA villages, but no difference has been recorded in the use of material inputs. Similarly, in the rabi jowar, there is a significant difference in labour use but not in the use of machine power and material inputs between two categories of villages. The total cost of cultivation in fully-implemented MGNREGA villages has been found higher by 22.91 per cent and 16.37 per cent in red gram and rabi jowar, respectively. The labour productivity of male and female has been noticed lower in fully-implemented MGNREGA villages for all operations in both the crops. The study has given some suggestions to address the problem of labour scarcity in fully-implemented villages.Impact of MGNREGA, Labour productivity, Crop returns, Agricultural and Food Policy, J43, J24, Input-use pattern,

Economic Analysis of Transaction Cost on Kolaramma Tank Watershed in Eastern Dry Zone of Karnataka

The transaction cost incurred on the Kolaramma tank watershed in the Kolar district of Karnataka, with a geographical area of 6,570 hectares and covering 26 catchments has been found to be Rs 78,89,210. The decomposition of this transaction cost into information, contractual and enforcement costs has revealed that enforcement cost amounted to a vast share of 82.0 per cent, followed by contractual cost (13.6%) and information cost (4.4%) in the total transaction cost. Considering the overall transaction cost, the investment on information and contractual cost has been quite less. These need to be increased by economizing on the administrative expenses of the implementing agency. Any additional investment on information and contractual cost would greatly benefit the actual beneficiaries in the watershed.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Comparative cost and returns of tractor owned and hired farms in Tungabhadra project (TBP) area of Karnataka, India

Mechanization saves time in completing different operations, which gives the crop more time to mature, allows the farmer to be more flexible in his farming operations and facilitates multi cropping. At present in India, trac-tors are being used for tillage on about 22.78 per cent of the total land area and sowing about 21.30 per cent of total area. Custom hiring service (CHS) is a popular method of gaining short-term control of farm machineries. The CHS gained importance mainly due to rise in the cropping intensity and drop in average landholdings. The productivity of major crops is higher on the tractor owning farms due to timely and sufficient availability of tractor services and 61.67 per cent of large farmers and 11.67 per cent of medium farmers own tractors. The net farm income is higher on tractor owning farms but input costs are low on custom hiring farms. It may be due to the high fixed costs and variable costs on tractor owning farms. The tractor charge was relatively same for all tractor drawn implements, it was ranging from `135.15/h to `142.11/h. The cost incurred was highest for rotavator (`574.93/h) followed by cage wheel puddler (`491.58/h) and MB plough (`462.58/h).The small and medium tractor hiring farms earned more net income. This shows that it is better for smaller farms to hire tractor services rather to have their own tractor CHS would constitute a reliable tool for implementing specific farming practices and obtaining a reasonable income

Robust Active Noise Control System for Fighter Aircraft Pilot Helmet Application

This paper proposes an Active Noise Control (ANC) scheme for fighter aircraft pilot helmet application. The proposed scheme addresses the noise environment inside the helmet to achieve perceivable noise attenuation. It also incorporates algorithms such as energy based detectors to control the operation of ANC system and variable step-size to increase the performance of ANC, to make the system robust. The paper highlights the real-time algorithm development on a DSP processor to meet the real-time resource constraints. The developed ANC system is evaluated in the laboratory for a typical fighter aircraft noise and the results when compared with the performance of existing system, found to be quite promising

Value Chain Management in Production and Marketing of Groundnut in Raichur District of Karnataka

The study has investigated the value chain management in production and marketing of groundnut in the Raichur district of Karnataka during kharif 2008. In groundnut, TMV-2 is the ruling variety occupying 85 per cent of the area in the district, but it is prone to pests and cut worm leaf minor; disease such as groundnut bud necrosis and leaf spot cause damage to the extent of 25 per cent of the yield. This has led to a decline in area under groundnut in the district, especially during kharif in comparison with rabi/summer season. Therefore, it is necessary to replace TMV-2 with high-yielding varieties incorporating the traits preferred along the value chain, i.e., production, consumption and marketing of groundnut. The existing seed supply system is meeting the seed requirement only to the extent of 7 per cent. Therefore, there is a need to strengthen the existing seed supply system for speedy seed multiplication and distribution of seeds to the farming communit

Groundnut Baseline and Early-Adoption Surveys in South Asia: Insights from TL-II (Phase-1) Project: Synthesis Report 2013

The production of groundnut and its cultivated areas in India showed a steady growth till the end of the twentieth century. Groundnut, however, lost its preeminence as the most important oilseed crop in the country during the last 13 years after the liberalization of edible oil imports. More recently the importance of groundnut is increasing for food uses. Despite a growth in productivity even during the last decade, the crop is losing areas in all the important growing states to more profitable crops. India is incurring a heavy import bill for the import of edible oils. India has relaunched a technology mission titled the ‘Integrated Scheme of Oilseeds, Pulses, Oil Palm and Maize’ development program to improve the productivity and production of oilseeds in the country and to reduce dependence on the imports of edible oil. Groundnut is one of the mandate crops of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-arid Tropics (ICRISAT), and this premier international institute has been contributing its bit for genetic improvement, crop production and protection practices in India and Africa during the last four decades. The generous support received from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has provided ICRISAT an opportunity to work more intensively with its research and development partners to demonstrate the potential of new technologies to enhance the yields, raise the profitability and revive the interest of the farmers in groundnut crop in India and the strategy chosen is the Farmer Participatory Varietal Selection (FPVS). This report synthesizes the efforts made during the short period of three years (2007–10) in the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for groundnut crop improvement in India. Overall, the FPVS results established that the new varieties out-yielded the respective check varieties in two states. Due to different constraints and lack of institutional support, the adoption of those cultivars was low in the targeted districts. From the past lessons learned, the report refocuses on the further efforts needed during the second phase of the project to achieve greater success and impact

Invitro screening of chilli (capsicum-annuum) seed samples for colletotrichum-dematium and its control

Seed samples of 4 hybrids (designated 101 to 104) were collected from multiplication farms in Mysore and 400 seeds from each sample were investigated in the laboratory. All samples showed the presence of C. dematium, but establishment of the fungus was not observed on seedlings of hybrids 102 and 104. Both captan and thiram were effective in reducing the incidence of C. dematium in all the samples

Implementation of Image Processing on Raspberry Pi

Today image processing are used in various techniques, this paper presents the implementation of image processing operations on Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is a basic embedded system and being a low cost a singleboard computer used to reduce the complexity of systems in real time applications. This platform is mainly based on python. Raspberry pi consist of Camera slot Interface (CSI) to interface the raspberry pi camera. Here, the Dark and Low contrast images captured by using the Raspberry Pi camera module are enhanced in order to identify the particular region of image. This concept is used in the real time application of MAV, The MAVs are basically used to capture images and videos through the Raspberry pi camera module. Because of its credit card sized (small) and less weight in the design. However, the image captured by MAVs will consist of unwanted things due to atmospheric conditions; hence it is necessary to remove noise present in the MAVs images