The field experiments were carried out for assessment of wheat-weather relationship at Anand Agricultural University, Anand Gujarat during two consecutive years of 2012-13-2013-14. The experiment was consisted of four dates of sowing (1st Nov., 15th Nov., 30th Nov., and 15th Dec.) and four varieties (V1: GW-322, V2: GW-496, V3: GW-366 (aestivum) and V4: GW-1139 (Durum) under split plot design with an objective for assessment of relationship between wheat yield and weather, dates of sowing and cultivars. There was linear relationship between radiation use efficiency (RUE) and grain yield. This information provide basis for manipulation of different dates and cultivars for higher RUE and grain yield. Results showed that heat use efficiency (HUE) and interaction effects of cultivar on grain yield the D2 sowing under with V1, V2 and V3 were found most suitable. Optimum sowing (D2) provides greater cultivars choice. Under early (D1) and late sowing (D3) cv. V1, V4 found most suitable. Cultivar V4 was not suitable for early sowing (D1) due to its lower HUE, and yield. However, it was performed better under D2, D3 and D4 sowing with higher grain yield. These options are served as an effective and operational tool for best contingent crop planning of wheat under Gujarat region

The store of healthy weed seeds that are dispersed across the soil profile and on the soil's surface is known as the weed seed bank. The creation of integrated weed management (IWM) programs can benefit from an understanding of the elements influencing the dynamics of weed seed banks because agricultural soils can have thousands of weed seeds per unit square area. Management should incorporate tactics to reduce the weed seed bank in addition to agricultural yield loss considerations. Numerous interrelated factors, including production practices and environmental circumstances, affect the persistence of viable seeds in the soil seed bank. Seed dormancy, physiological age, predation, microbiological decomposition, environmental circumstances, burial depth, burial time, and tillage are a few of the factors affecting weed seed bank. For a thorough understanding of the weed seed bank, it is crucial to have a solid grasp of weed biology, including morphology, lifecycles, seed generation

The commercial use of stingless bees as a prospective candidate for crop pollination in vegetables grown under protected cultivation has expanded the opportunities for promoting stingless bee rearing in several nations, including India. In this study, two stingless bee (Tetragonula iridipennis) colonies were kept inside a poly house of 2000 m2 area grown with Rohini hybrid cucumber at Reddiyarchatram, Dindigul District, Tamil Nadu. Stingless bee foraging activity on cucumber flowers inside the poly house begun at 07.15 h and ceased around 17:50 h. The peak foraging activity was noticed between 9.30h and 11.00 h with maximum forager population of 12 nos./flower/ 10 min. to gather the floral rewards. The nectar foragers took a mean of 12.4 sec in a flower to gather the nectar and pollen foragers spent 4.8 seconds per flower for pollen collection activity

The puffed rice is a whole grain puffed product prepared from pregelatinized (parboiled) rice. The parboiled rice was first cleaned and conditioned with salt solution to get moisture content of 11% (wb) and salt concentration of 1% (w/w). The pre-treated parboiled rice then puffed in hot sand (185-190°C) for sort time (14-17 s). The puffing characteristics of three popular rice varieties namely Swarna, Mahamaya and IR-1010 were studied and compared. The average values of moisture content of puffed rice were found 1.23, 1.22 and 1.27% (wb) for Swarna, Mahamaya and IR-1010 rice varieties, respectively. The different puffing characteristic for Swarna, Mahamaya and IR-1010 rice varieties were found as; Volume Expansion Ratio (VER) 7.30, 7.47 and 7.25; Bulk Density 0.125, 0.121 and 0.124 g/cm3; Hardness 10.98, 10.83 and 10.95 N; Crispness 84.37, 86.33 and 81.19 number of fractures; Whiteness Index (WI) 39.29, 39.75 and 37.68; and Puffing Efficiency (PE) 92.62, 93.01 and 92.02%, respectively. On comparing the various puffing properties of all the three rice varieties only crispness and whiteness index were varying significantly, at the level of 5%. The sensory attributes do not show any significance difference among the puffed rice produces from these three varieties

Soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merrill] contains 18-22 % oil and 38-42 % protein and is a potential source of oil as well as protein. Soybean has attracted the Indian farmers due to its wider adaptability and high yield potential and better prices like cash crop as compared to another oilseed crop. There is no parallel to the phenomenal increase in area of soybean in India and particularly in Rajasthan. Soybean is a rainy season crop and it faces severe weed-crop competition and yield reduction which may vary from 12-85 per cent. Weeds rob the soybean crop for valuable inputs like nutrients, moisture, energy which cause severe reduction in growth and yield of soybean due to their better establishment and faster growth. Weeds control is the most challenging task in the soybean and the type, nature and their threats are changing due to change in the climate mainly rise in the temperature and CO2 in the atmosphere entailing to the untimely, undistributed, and intense rains. Keeping these points in view, integration of various weed managements techniques, their new dimensions including precision, robotics, drone, and new potentials etc. have been contemplated to achieve maximum degree of weed control with minimum losses in yield for sustainable production of soybean

Donkeys play a crucial role in poor households in developing countries like India though, they are largely invisible in development policy and plans and they often fail to find their place in agricultural and food security plans. They are neither on the livestock radar in agricultural or food security discussions nor do they feature in transport policy discussions. Donkey occupy a place in government statistics but their economic value is not articulated correctly. Unlike bovines, they are never a part of export or trade debate. Three registered breeds of Donkey in India are; Kachchhi, Halari and Spiti and there are few more donkey populations that have been studied for their genetic variability. This review focuses on status of donkey as a livestock resource in India with special reference to Marathwada

Energy is critical for milk production in high-yielding dairy animals, and the supplementation of lipids to ruminant feed is a strategy to increase the energy density of the diet without increasing the proportion of grains, thus, preventing ruminal acidosis and low milk fat yield. In this context, soybean oil and mustard oil are readily available sources of lipids to dairy producers in India that have shown marked improvement in the performance of dairy animals

Present study was carried out during Kharif season 2019-20 at Bharatpur and during 2021-22 at Alwar district of Eastern Rajasthan. Front line demonstrations were conducted on tomato by the active participation of the farmers with the objective of improved technologies of tomato production potential. The improved technologies consist F1 hybrid variety (Arka Samrat), balanced fertilizers (soil test based) application and integrated pest and disease management etc. Tomato is one of the most important vegetable crops of the country. All the recommended practices were provided to the selected farmers. The data related to the cost of cultivation, production, productivity, gross return & net return were collected as per schedule and analyzed. Result of the present study revealed that higher yield in the demonstrations was recorded (500 q/ha) as compared to farmers practice (431 q/ha) traditionally adopted by the farmers. The percentage increase in the yield over farmers practice 16.00 was recorded. The extension gap, technology gap and technology index were computed 69 q/ha,50 q/ha and 9.09 % respectively. The demonstrated field gave higher net return Rs.294375 and B:C ratio1:4.32. The result of the study indicated the gap existed in the potential yield and demonstration yield is due to soil fertility and weather conditions. Present results clearly show that the yield and economics of tomato can be boost up by adopting recommended technologies

Growth rate of cost A and scale of finance increased almost @ same rate for all the crops in both the districts. Cost A having higher values than scale of finance was the general trend found; hence farmers had to invest additionally on their own to meet the gap

Field experiment was conducted during rabi seasons of the years 2017-18 and 2018-19 to study the effect of NPK fertilizers on potato yield and its economics in North Gujarat Agro-climatic condition on loamy sand soils of Potato Research Station, Sardarkrushinagar Dantiwada Agricultural University, Deesa. The experiment was laid out by using Kufri Badshah cultivar in randomised block design with four replications comprising seven treatments viz., T1 : 50 % RDF of NPK, T2 : 100 % RDF of NPK, T3 : 150 % RDF of NPK, T4 : Without N fertilizer (PK), T5 : Without P fertilizer (NK), T6 : Without K fertilizer (NP), T7: Without NPK (absolute control). The Recommended dose of fertilizer (RDF) of potato at North Gujarat is 275:138:275 NPK kg/ha. Based on two years pooled data significantly the highest total tuber yield was recorded under treatment T3 (50.17 t/ha) which was at par with treatments T2 (49.26 t/ha) and T5 (46.71 t/ha). The crop fertilized with 100% RDF gave the highest net returns hence it is recommended to apply 100% RDF i.e., 275:138:275 NPK kg/ha for higher yield and net return

The present investigation was carried out at Jaguli Instructional Farm, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Moganpur, Nadia, West Bengal in Kharif-2015 to asses genetic variability and association among 12 different morphological traits of rice under two hydrological regimes irrigated and water stress condition at reproductive stage. The study revealed that the maximum phenotypic and genotypic co-efficient of variation was exhibited by the characters root to shoot ratio, number of effective tillers per plant and flag leaf area under both the environments. Highest heritability was recorded for plant height followed by days to maturity, root length and test weight across the environments. High heritability coupled with high genetic advance was evaluated for the character root to shoot ratio and high heritability with moderate genetic advance was observed for the characters number of effective tillers, flag leaf area and days to maturity in both the environments suggesting that direct selection of these characters maybe useful for future improvement of these genotypes for drought tolerance and grain yield. High heritability with low genetic advance was showed by the character fertility percentage under both hydrological regimes indicating that direct selection of this trait would not be useful but further improvement of this trait could be done by population improvement method. The character association study revealed that the characters root to shoot ratio, number of effective tillers per plant, root length and panicle length had positive significant correlation in water stress condition at both genotypic and phenotypic level whereas root length and root to shoot ratio had positive correlation with yield per plant in irrigated condition. Plant height and flag leaf area had positive correlation with yield per plant in both the environments. Results from the study highlighted that the characters root to shoot ratio, root length, flag leaf area and number of effective tillers per plant were correlated with yield and had either high direct or indirect effect and could be considered for selection of desirable lines. So, further improvement of these traits through selection may provide a high response to selection

This study aimed to evaluate twenty-six elite pearl millet inbred lines as well as the suitable tester among seven different. The elite inbred lines were crossed as female parents with seven testers (3 narrow base testers and 4 broad base testers) as male parents, i.e., MIT-27, MIT-28, MIT-29 (Narrow base testers), MOPT-30, MOPT-31, MOPT-32 and MOPT-33 (Broad base testers) at the International Crops Research Institute for The Semi-Arid Tropics, Patancheru, India during 2018 growing summer season. The resulting 182 crosses with five commercial check hybrids i.e., 86M86, 9444, ICMH 1301, ICMH 356 and HHB 67 Imp were evaluated in a yield trial during 2018 growing rainy season. Each experiment was laid out in randomized complete block design with two replications. The morphological and agronomical evaluated traits included days to 50% flowering, No. of Productive tillers, panicle length (cm), panicle girth (cm) and grain yield (kg/ha). Results revealed that variance due to locations were highly significant for all the studied traits except for number of productive tillers. The parental inbred lines (MBL-4 and MBL-9 were the best combiners) possessed high GCA effects for grain yield. The inbred tester T-2 was the best combiner among the testers and expressed the best SCA effect over all crosses. In comparison, among broad base tester and narrow base testers, both type of testers ranked 7 to 8 hybrids among top ten hybrids. This result reveals that we can use any type of tester to identify the best combiner. Heterosis results revealed that only single cross hybrids resulted positive heterosis

Fifteen prerelease sugarcane clones were tested against sugarcane varieties 87A 298 and 83V 15 as checks for their suitability to early planted conditions (January planting) under moisture stress/drought at Regional Agricultural Research Station, Anakapalle during 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-23. Sugarcane clones tolerant to moisture stress is need of the hour as sugarcane yields are drastically reducing due to moisture stress/drought. Field experiments were conducted with stress and nonstress treatments for evaluation of sugarcane clones’ tolerance to soil moisture stress/drought. Among fifteen prerelease sugarcane clones tested sugarcane clones 2015A 51 (96.06 t/ha), 2015A 233 (94.14 t/ha), 2015A 183 (89.12 t/ha) and 2015A 93 (84.09 t/ha) recorded higher cane yield over other clones tested. The standards 87A 298 and 83V 15 recorded a cane yield of 73.02 t/ha and 85.076 t/ha which are lower than the superior clones. These clones also recorded significantly low SLA which indicates more photosynthetic assimilates per unit area. SPAD/SCMR values at 120 DAP under stress conditions (Summer). These sugarcane clones also recorded significantly higher SPAD/SCMR values with standard 87A 298. The ancillary data denoting stress tolerance like sheath moisture per cent, root spread area, total bio mass production per stool under stress and physiological parameters like leaf proline content is also high in these sugarcane clones. Based on three years findings, sugarcane clones 2015A 51, 2015A 233, 2015A 183 and 2015A 93 were found to be suitable for drought/soil moisture stress condition of cane cultivation based on cane yield, ancillary data and physiological traits in relation to moisture stress tolerance. The drought tolerance efficiency per cent was high in 2015A 59 (92.08%) followed by 2015A 233 (89.33%) and 2015A 93 (87.98%) over other clones tested. The standards 87A 298 and 83V 15 recorded a drought tolerance efficiency per cent of 72.27and 67.52 respectively

Experiment was conducted to study the effect of organic seed priming on seed quality of foxtail millet. The experiment was carried out in the Seed Quality and Research laboratory, National Seed Project, University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad during 2018. Seed quality parameters were significantly influenced due to seed priming with organics. Among the different treatments seed priming with panchagavya (5 %) recorded significantly higher seed germination (86.7 %), root length (8.49 cm) whereas, panchagavya (3 %) recorded higher shoot length (10.83 cm), seedling dry weight (2.57 g), seedling vigour index-I (1650) and seedling vigour index-II (221) compared to control