This study was conducted in Dindigul district of Tamil Nadu to assess the agricultural sustainability for Palani and Sirumalai hill and to develop the optimum farm plan for Palani and Sirumalai hills. Analysis of sustainability using farm level indicators involves assessment of ecological soundness, economic viability and social acceptability. This study results indicated that ecological soundness do not have clear cut distinction on sustainability between two hills and Sirumalai hill is comparatively higher sustainable with regard to economic viability and social acceptability. A sustainable rural livelihood framework analysis involves analysis on natural capital, financial capital, physical capital, human capital and social capital. These results showed that Palani hill is more sustainable with regard to Physical and human assets and Sirumalai hill is more sustainable with regard to financial and social assets. Livelihood security analyses also done with comparative livelihood index scores for food security, economic security, education security, habitat security and social network security for both Palani and Sirumalai hill. The results revealed that both hills were not secured with regard to education and social network. Among other indices, Palani hill had higher comparative livelihood security with regard to food and health and Sirumalai hill favoured well with regard to economic and habitat security. The optimum farm plan with inclusion of dairy enterprise was suggested for Palani hills and optimum farm plan with inclusion of acid lime was suggested for Sirumalai hills.

Effect of foliar application of various nitrogenous, phosphorus and ethylene chemicals on flowering, fruit set and yield of mango variety Bangalora was studied at the Santhur, Pochampalli, Krishnagiri District during 2012 - 2017. Seven foliar treatments comprised of T1 as control T2 and T3 - KNO3@ 2% spray with and without 1% Urea respectively.T4-KH2PO4 @1% T5-NH4NO3 @ 2%, T6 and T7 -Ethephon @ 400ppm and 800 ppm concentration respectively with three successive foliar sprays replicated thrice in twenty five year old ‘Bangalora’ mango orchard. Paclobutrazol (PBZ) is applied for all the trees @ 5ml/tree during the month of April. The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design with three replications, and a single tree was treated as a unit/treatment. The soil application of paclobutrazol @ 5ml/tree during April month and three successive foliar sprays of KH2PO4 @ 1% at an interval of 30 days during May, June and July months resulted in the highest number of fruits per tree (391.87), individual fruit weight (452g), the maximum yield per tree (198.45 kg/tree) during the off season followed by the spray of KNO3 @ 2% with an yield of 186.22 kg/tree.

The effect of different ingredients viz., whey proteins and sodium caseinate as a source of milk proteins, stabilizers and spices were studied on the sensory properties of cheese dip. Cheese dips were formulated with five different sodium caseinate to WPC ratios viz., 20:80, 40:60, 50:50, 60:40 and 80: 20 and with three different stabilizers viz., combination of starch with guar gum (4:1), combination of starch with CMC (4:1) and CMC alone. The cheese dip with protein blend ratio of 20:80 (8%) with CMC alone as a stabilizer fetched highest flavor, body and texture and colour and appearance scores. In the optimized product, four spices viz., black pepper, ginger, cumin and oregano at three different levels i.e. 0.1, 0.3 and 0.5% were tried to select the optimum level of each spice in the cheese dip. Further, to select one best spice for cheese dip among the optimized level of four spices, the product was prepared with the optimized level and was subjected to sensory evaluation. Among spices, roasted cumin gains the maximum sensory score and thus was selected for the preparation of spicy cheese dip.

The present study was conducted in Mahoba District of Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh. This region is most suited for rearing of Bundelkhandi goats due to natural habitat and special survival characteristics in the breeds. A sample of 240 farmers and their 566 buck and 1254 doe were randomly selected from all four blocks. The respondents were interviewed with the help of well-structured interview schedule. To assess the managerial, market and investment related practices and identify the socio-economic characteristics of the goat farmers. In Mahoba highest 33.57 percent group belong the age of 36-45 years group, highest 40.35 percent had primary school education, highest 52.29 percent belonged to the others Backward Classes group, 52.68 percent of the respondents are Female, married 92.64 percent, majority 46.16 percent owned the goats in number ranging 5-10, Majority of 56.21 percent of goat keepers were marginal (No Land) or (<1ha) land holder, highest experience 38.61 percent in goat farming was 10-15 years and the first reason 74.20 percent was sale of live weight. The net Income per goat was the highest in semi-intensive systems (Rs. 2460) followed by intensive systems (Rs. 2333) and were lowest in extensive systems (Rs. 1783). Semi-intensive systems can be profitable at rural areas in Mahoba.

Rheology concerns with the flow and deformation of substances and, in particular, their behaviour in the transient area between solids and fluids. Rheologicl behaviour of barnyard millet four was studied under dynamic shear studies. The millet flour was set for three different temperature i. e 80, 100 and 120˚C for which dynamic shear and pasting properties of the flour was studied, the highest Pasting temperature Viscosity (cP) for 80, 100 and120ºC were 100.2, 122.3 and 330.6. Storage and loss modulus G’ and G’’ and flow behaviour were studied. Results indicated that storage modulus was higher than loss modulus at all temperature and the best fit model was Herschel- Bulkley.

The India Sugar sector is the second largest agro-based industry in the country contributing significantly to the socio economic development of the nation. Indian sugar Industry is surrounded by a web of policies and politics including lobbying. Sugar industry operations are highly regulated by the Government. Till 2013 the sugar sector was controlled completely by the Government i.e. from procurement of raw material to marketing and export. The Government in centre regulates the minimum support price which is FRP in case of sugarcane and export-import tariffs. The Government in State controls the cane area reservation, Statutory Advised price (SAP) and other sugarcane subsidies. The Government also keeps buffer stocks and provides sugar thru PDS. Several Committees have studied the Indian Sugar Industry and submitted various recommendations. The association of sugar mills was requesting for liberalization of the industry. But the Government of India has only partially decontrolled the sugar industry in 2013.The paper examines the policies and politics around Industry which is ultimately effecting the efficacy of India’s Sugar Economy.

Organic farming in India is being followed from old world. Organic agriculture in India has its roots in traditional agricultural practices that evolved in many villages and farming communities over the millennium. Gujarat has remained a leading state in adopting organic farming. Adoption of organic farming necessarily involves a sequence of steps that need to be followed by the growers and verified by certification and inspection agencies. Looking into this, Government of Gujarat established Gujarat Organic Products Certification Agency (GOPCA), a Gujarat state government certification body that carries out impartial third party inspection & certification in organic production and handling. To find out the level of adoption of organic farming practices and constraints faced by farmers in adoption of organic farming practices, respondents were selected from three talukas and 9 villages purposively. From each selected village, 10 farmers who were engaged in organic farming partially or fully were selected purposively. Thus sample size consisted of 90 respondents from 9 village covered under study. Most of the respondents had followed organic farming practices like land preparation, summer and winter ploughing, application of compost/ash and vermi-composting. Similarly cow urine for seed treatment, manual weeding was found practiced. None of the respondents found to be used bio herbicides. Majority respondents were utilized castor cake, neem cake, bio fertilizers like PSB, rhizobium culture and Azotobacter and groundnut cake as source of nutrients and were found to be used cow dung/urine as concentrated manures. None of the respondents were found to use bone meal or fish meal. They used bio agents and neem leaf extract and buttermilk to manage insect, pest and soil borne fungal disease in various crops. Majority of respondents expressed lack of assured marketing network of organically produces of organic farming (96.32 %), lack of information regarding organic farming(92.22 %), no government subsidy for organic farming cultivation (84.44%), high certification charges (78.89 %), no price premium in local market (72.22%), inadequate transport facility (75.56%) etc. Were major constraints they faced in adoption of organic farming practices.

A study was carried out to evaluate storage behavior of mango fruit, to increase the storability and to minimize the post harvest losses in mango fruit variety- Chhattisgarh Nandiraj, under the influence of five dipping treatments and after treatment number of marketable and unmarketable ripe mango fruit, colour, TSS, acidity, ascorbic acid, total sugar, PLW, storabilitywas observed. Matured freshly harvested mango fruits of uniform size were treated with different treatments as post harvest dips for 10 minutes. The result on individual effects of the treatments indicated that mango fruits dipping in adusha leaf extract 5% (D4) were found superior with significantly high number of marketable fruit, longer storability, lower physiological loss in weight and higher firmness of fruits, excellent organoleptic rating, the treatment was also promising for slower increase inTSS, while slower decrease in ascorbic acid and acidity during storage.

Purchasing nitty-gritty is a common phenomenon in every human being. The consumer preference chances in each and every person’s .The paper bring into focus consumer preference of instant mix food products. Instant mix food products per seis emerging in the fastest world and simplifying the cooking process. An analysis was conducted on a sample of consumers in Madurai district involving 135 respondents. The respondents are divided by rural group and Low, Middle and High income group and working women’s group among urban consumers. The conjoint analysis, Percentage analysis, Multilog linear model, Dummy variable model, ANNOVA with two qualitative variable model and Garrett ranking technique were used to analyze the variants.

This study was aimed at development of an alternate rice seed planting method instead of direct sowing of bare rice seeds. CO51 variety rice seeds were bound pelleted and prepared for planting. Bare rice seeds (three) were collated and bound with glue manually and were pelleted with a special pelleting mixture in a pelleting device and then germination tests were carried out for both bare and pelleted seeds. The physico-mechanical properties of bare rice seeds, bound rice multiple seeds (three) and pelleted rice seeds such as length, width, thickness, sphericalness, bulk density, true density, thousand weight of grains, coefficient of static friction, porosity, angle of repose, pelletization efficiency, fragmentation test, dissolution time in water, number of seeds in pellet, were measured. Germination tests were done in pot culture for bare rice seeds, bound rice multiple seeds (three) and multiple pelleted rice seeds. The study shows that, planting pelleted seeds led to equal emergence rate compared with bare rice seeds. This study showed that using the pelleted seeds result in more favorable crop than bare rice seeds. Moreover, pelleted rice seeds could be used for mechanized seeding as the pelleting could withstand the crumbling effect of the seeder’s metering mechanism.

In this study sweet flag (Acorus calamus L.) O/W nano emulsion was developed by ultra-sonication method. The macro- scale emulsion developed by adding 6 % A. calamus oil, a blend of tween 80 and span 80 with Hydrophile-Lipophile Balance (HLB) value-10.0 and cyclohexane. The developed macro- scale emulsion was subjected to ultra-sonication for 30 minutes at a high frequency of 20 kHz. The characterization in a Scanning electron microscope (SEM) showed that droplet diameter is in nano range and spherical in appearance. The mean droplet size, polydispersity index, and zeta potential were 68.2 nm, 0.21 and 64.3 mV respectively. The lethal concentration (LC50) value on C. maculatus for nanoemulsion was 0.40 % while it was 0.74 % for the micro- scale emulsion. Nanoemulsion of A. calamus has shown enhanced insecticidal activity at a lower concentration.

A study was carried out at the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Agro Climate Research Centre, Coimbatore during the period of 2019 to identify the productivity index for groundnut in Tamil Nadu. The secondary data on production, area and productivity on groundnut crop was collected from Department of Economics and Statistics, Chennai and Statistical Hand book of Tamil Nadu for 15 years for period from 2000 to 2015. In this paper Enyedi’s method was used to calculate the productivity index. From the study it is found that in Tamil Nadu, seven districts were identified as low productivity index, sixteen district comes under moderate productivity index and nine district has high productivity index. The rainfall deviation on groundnut growth rate were correlated and the result shows there is liner influence of rainfall on groundnut growth rat.

It is difficult to predicting grain yield of wheat for a large area because the relationship may not be stable even if information on surface cover type is used. Remote sensing observations were found successful for reliable and quantitative estimates of canopy biophysical properties. Keeping this in view a study was planned in village Halali of district Raisen. The study area belongs to eastern part of the fertile Vindyanchal Plateau. This study has been done for the data collected during humid subtropical climate with cool, dry winter’s a hot summer and a humid monsoon season. The plant bio physical parameters were taken from LAI meter, Chlorophyll meter and Spectroradiometer. These parameters were taken as input parameters for PROSIAL model. The output of this model was recorded as simulated data. The simulated data & ground data were used to get R2 by linear correlation. Relationships between wave length and spectral response were drawn by relative spectral response (RSR) for 2nm intervals using Lagrange’s interpolation scheme. The empirical regression models were developed for the study area by using in situ field observation and LAI was calculated during growing to harvesting crop season 2015-2016. The spatial resolution of AWiFS (56m) was adequate enough to ensure relatively accurate retrials of LAI of wheat crop at regional scale. The AWiFS has a 5- days revisit period which may cause loss of data due to persistent cloud or fog and to assess. However, the Resoures at-2 increases the possibility to get clear sky data availability. The linear correlation between simulated and ground data during the wheat growing season gave high coefficient of determination (R2= 0.99) in SWIR band.

The government of India is investing in a large-scale, expensive program of individualized soil testing and customized fertilizer recommendations, with the hope that scientific information will lead farmers to optimize the fertilizer mix. The Soil Health Card is a printed report that a farmer will be handed over for each of his holdings. It will indicate the fertilizer recommendations and the soil amendments required for each farm. It shows optimum combinations of nutrients required for each crop along with the details of various parameters of the soil being tested. The present study was undertaken in Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri Districts of Tamil Nadu to analyse the level of awareness and knowledge of the farmers regarding the Soil Health Card scheme. The primary data for the study at micro level was collected by survey method adopting personal interview of the selected respondents with the help of well-structured and pre-tested questionnaire. It is found that that nearly 3/4th of the sample respondents are aware of this scheme and more than 50 percent of the farmers have medium level of knowledge regarding the utility and importance of this scheme. The information was disseminated mostly through neighbours and friends. It is also found that maximum number of farmers in both the districts of Tamil Nadu have moderately favorable attitude towards this scheme. Knowledge level was found to be the highly significant factor influencing the adoption of the soil test based recommendations by the farmers.

The harvested Aggregatum onion bulbs (CO-5) were cured by field curing, shade curing and artificial curing at three velocities of the blower (2, 4 and 6ms-1). The objective of the study is to use the developed artificial curing system as an alternative method during unfavorable weather conditions. The curing time and quality parameters like geometrical properties, PLM%, pyruvic acid, total soluble solids and redness (a*) value were studied. Among all the methods, the curing was faster in artificial curing (6ms-1) whereas shade curing took maximum time for complete curing. The PLM%, pyruvic acid, TSS and the color value were found to increase significantly during curing. The PLM% was found to be minimum for artificial curing-6ms-1 (16.3%).The redness value was higher for shade curing and lower for field curing. The curing of bulb was faster with artificial curing (6ms-1) and therefore it is recommended for curing onion bulbs.

Maize is the most important cereal and it is mostly used as grain, feed, fodder, and industrial products. In the present study, an attempt was made to calculate the cost of cultivation and to evaluate the performance of different marketing channels and to find out constraints in marketing of maize in the study area. A multi-stage sampling method involving a combination of purposive and random sampling procedures was employed in drawing up the sample block, villages and farmers for collecting primary data. Three different marketing channels were identified in the study area. The marketing efficiency was relatively higher in channel I (2.16), followed by channel III (1.95) and channel I (1.83) I because of less intermediaries in the channel. The problems such as high cost involved in different marketing functions, Lack of Market Information, Lack of transportation Facility, Lack of Storage Facility, Low Price, Irregular Payment are hindering farmers to realize their higher returns. The study suggested that a well-built strong infrastructure provision with efficient use of inputs and without marketing malpractices would show the way to an economically well-built maize economy.

In Indian economy Agriculture plays an important role. Erode district of Tamil Nadu state is agrarian in nature and about 40 percent of the total geographical area is cultivated with crops such as sugarcane, paddy, banana, turmeric and tapioca under irrigated condition. The present study attempts to analyse the resource use pattern and resource use efficiency in the production of major crops and to explore the technical and scale efficiency of agricultural production in the district by selecting 120 farms at random. Simple average and percentage and coefficient of variation were used to analyse the resource use pattern and Cobb-Douglas production to analyse the resource use efficiency of different crops; input oriented DEA was employed to examine technical and scale efficiency in the farms. The results of resource use pattern and resource use efficiency analysis indicated that farm yard manure usage in crops like sugarcane, paddy, turmeric and tapioca, human labour in the case of tapioca, sugarcane and paddy, phosphorus in sugarcane, banana and turmeric, potash in paddy and banana and machine hours usage in turmeric, banana and paddy were sub optimal and increasing the usage these inputs would increase the yield of the above said crops economically. The DEA analysis also revealed the possibility of improving technical efficiency of crop production as in lines with resource use and efficiency analysis and also indicated the existence of scale inefficiency arising due to in-efficient input combinations as indicated by the slacks in machine hours, potash, nitrogen, phosphorus and human labour in the production of crops in Erode district.

Intensive field survey was undertaken during August 2017 to February 2019 in major coconut growing districts of Tamil Nadu to study the distribution, host range and natural enemies of new invasive pest in India coconut, Rugose spiralling whitefly (RSW) Aleurodicus rugioperculatus Martin. The new invasive pest completed its life cycle in 59.00± 3.2 days in coconut with egg, nymphal, pupal and adult period of 6.9±0.88, 19.57±2.17, 10.9±0.78 and 22.7±3.48 days respectively. The RSW incidence were recorded in Coimbatore, Tiruppur, Erode, Theni, Pudukottai and Kanyakumari districts of Tamil Nadu. The rugose spiralling whitefly incidence was high in Coimbatore district followed by tiruppur and Erode. Survey carried out in Tamil Nadu showed the occurrence of rugose spiralling whitefly in21 hosts belonging to 15 botanical families. Among all host plants coconut and banana are the most preferable hosts to RSW. In this present study 9 predators (3 from Neuroptera, 5 from Coleoptera and one from hymenoptera) and one parasitoid belongs to the family Aphelinidae (Encarsia guadeloupae Viggiani) were observed. Among the natural enemies E. guadeloupae is the predominant parasitoid with the potential of parasitizing RSW upto70-80%. The field samples collected from Kanyakumari district had more parasitization (60.75%) by E. guadeloupae followed by Coimbatore (58.60%) and Tiruppur(56.06%) district.