Food security essentially means that all people at all times have access to safe and nutritious food to maintain health and active life. Adequate food in terms of quantity and quality for all the people is a prerequisite condition for a sustainable growth of a nation. Lack of food leads to hunger and starvation and may even become the cause of death. There is positive relationship between food and health of an individual and for that adequate food is a necessity towards maintaining a decent living

A field experiment was conducted during kharif 2015-16 at Horticultural College & Research Institute, Dr. Y.S.R. Horticultural University, Venkataramannagudem (A.P) to find out the effect of plant growth regulators on orange flesh sweet potato varieties for vegetative and root tuber characters. Among the varieties tested, ST-14 registered significantly higher values for length of leaf lobe, leaf area, vine length, vine inter nodal length and number of branches per plant, while the width of leaf lobe, petiole length and number of flowers per plant were maximum in the variety Kamala sundari at 80 DAT. Spraying of GA3 @ 300 ppm showed maximum values for vegetative attributes. Significantly highest number of flowers per plant was recorded with the application of 2,4-D @ 15 ppm in the variety Kamala sundari. The higher values of plant dry matter percentage, number of root tubers per plant, root tuber length and root tuber yield per plant were recorded in the variety ST-14 by GA3 @ 300 ppm, while root tuber girth was maximum in the variety Kamala sundari by CCC @ 500 ppm.

Effect of microtuber formation in long term keeping with and without growth retardants under dark conditions revealed in presence of BAP and CCC, the period of microtuber formation was reduced from120day to 90 days. The optimum level of 5 mgl-1 BA and 500 mgl-1 CCC obtained maximum weight and size of microtuber. The varietal differences were significant and Kufri Pukhraj found best for the weight and size of microtuber. The level 500 mgl-1 CCC favours the increase microtuber weight irrespective of the presence of cytokinin.CCC at both lower and higher level than this reduced the microtuber weight. Effect of storage temperature and duration of storage on microtuber dormancy were evaluated and find out that the best dormancy breaking treatment was 25 °C. Among different temperature 4°C temperature reported no germination and may be used for storing the microtuber up to six month period.

The present study was taken up to ascertain the seroprevalence of brucellosis in small ruminants of Anand, districts of the Central Gujarat region. A total of 200 serum samples were collected from the goat and sheep of Anand district and subjected to different serological test i.e., Rose Bengal Plate test (RBPT), Standard Tube Agglutination Test (STAT) and Indirect ELISA to detect the brucella antibody. A total 200 sera sample including 100 from goats and 100 from sheep collected from the Anand district. Among 200 sera samples of sheep and goats, 94 (47.00%) samples were found to be positive. 93 sera samples were positive by I-ELISA, 27 by RBPT while 16 by STAT. One RBPT positive goat serum sample was found to be negative by I-ELISA. While species wise incidence was found to be 55 (55.00%) and 38 (38.00%) among goats and sheep, respectively. Fifty six goat sera samples were found to be sero-positive, out of which 55 samples were found to be positive by I-ELISA while 16 by RBPT and 10 by STAT. Among 38 sera samples of sheep found to be positive by I-ELISA while 11 by RBPT and 6 by STAT. Seroprevalence of brucellosis among goat was 16.00%, 10.00% and 55.00% higher than the sheep was 11.00%, 6.00% and 38.00% by RBPT, STAT and I- ELISA respectively. In small ruminantes sex wise seroprevalence was higher in female to be 18%, 13% and 65% then male 9%, 3% and 28% by RBPT, STAT and I-ELISA (Brucella spp.), respectively.

Present investigation including 46 F3 families of rice were evaluated under aerobic condition during 2013, with an objective of tracing the relationship between yield component characters followed by construction of selection indices. Among yield component characters viz., productive tillers per plant (X1), single panicle weight (X2), spikelet fertility (X3), biomass (X4) and harvest index (X5) exhibited highly significant positive correlation coefficients with high direct effects on grain yield per plant (X6) indicating selection based on these characters could be very effective for yield and the same were considered to construct selection indices. Sixty three selection indices involving grain yield per plant and five yield component characters were constructed using discriminant function analysis and selection efficiency of the function was improved by increasing number of characters in the index. Among single character index, spikelet fertility exhibited higher genetic gain (49.41) and relative efficiency (1138.48%) over straight selection for grain yield. Whereas selection indices with six, five and four character combinations recorded highest genetic advance (79.56, 73.99 and 71.63 resp.) as well as relative efficiency (1833.09%, 1704.91% and 1650.65% resp.). F3 families viz., 23-5-108, 23-5-315 and 23-5-277 were found superior based on index score estimates. Practically, index with minimum characters could be advantageously exploited and advocated for selecting high yielders in rice.

India holds an important place in pulses being the world's largest producer, importer and consumer of pulses. Gujarat is one of promising state of India in terms of pulse production and consumption. Within Gujarat, northern part of state contributes higher in term of pulse production. This region specific pulses growth and instability in area, production, productivity and price, arrival seasonality affect overall pulses scenario in state. Therefore, this study focused on to study the growth and instability in area, production, productivity and also price, arrival seasonality with reference to North Gujarat. Overall, North Gujarat was observed positive growth in yield (3.77%), but it is not substantial to increase the production (-2.55%) of cluster bean over the study period. Except, Patan all other districts of North Gujarat was observed positive growth in yield resultant it increased production of cluster bean at regional level with 1.41 percent per annum. The growth (4.78%) performance of production of green gram during the study period had been satisfactory because yield increase (4.65%) favoured this crop even small decline in area (-0.74%). The growth (-5.21%) performance of moth bean production during the study period had been extremely poor even yield increased with 8.26 percent but growth in area decrease was substantial (-13.1%). Growth performance of tur crop during the study period had been marginalized even yield increased with 9.45 percent in North Gujarat because acreage decrease (-10.09) was more prominent phenomena. Growth performance of urad crop during the study period had been guided by the yield increase and marginal acreage increase as compared to any other major pulses in North Gujarat. Being an industrial crop and there is no spoilage, so price fluctuation was very low in cluster bean as compared to other pluses crops. The seasonal prices of green gram were higher in the month of April, May and June in most of the selected markets. In summer season, there is a scare of vegetables and green gram is supplement to it, so the prices were higher during April to June months. Tur prices were higher in month of April to July. The seasonal arrival indices of urad were higher in the month of October, November and December in the selected market of study area. In moth bean, there was no relationship between market arrivals and prices during study period.

Bacterial leaf spot caused by Xanthomonas campestris pv. viticola (Nayudu) Dye has emerged as an important disease in grape growing regions of Maharashtra. In this study the bactericidal effect of different chemicals and biological agents were assessed in in-vitro conditions. Eleven different commercially formulated chemicals (streptocycline, bronopol, mancozeb, copper sulphate, copper oxychloride, copper hydroxide, carbendazim, difenoconazole, validamycin, kasugamycin and potassium phosphite) were tested at 50, 100, 500, 1000, 2000 and 3000 ppm concentrations. Three biological agents viz., Bacillus subtilis, Trichoderma as perolloides and Pseudomonas fluorescens were also evaluated against X. campestris pv. viticola. Among different chemicals, streptocycline, mancozeb and bronopol showed significant inhibition of the pathogen while kasugamycin, copper oxychloride and copper hydroxide exhibited a low efficacy with respect to control of the bacteria. Copper sulphate, validamycin, difenoconazole, carbendazim and potassium phosphate showed no inhibition at all tested concentrations. In biological agents B. subtilis and T. asperolloides have potential against X. campestris pv. viticola, pathogen of bacterial leaf spot disease of grapes.

The importance of additive gene effects for most of the nine traits in the three crosses under two transplanting conditions suggested substantial scope of improvement in yield status can still be achieved by using breeding procedures. GY/P, BY/P and PH possessed high heritability and genetic advance in both conditions and emerged as ideal traits for selection. G/P, T/P and DFF in E1 and HI in E2 appeared also as ideal traits for selection owing to their high estimates for both parameters in respective conditions. At both levels, positive correlation of GY/P was recorded with HI in both transplanting conditions. BY/P, PL in both transplanting conditions and T/P and G/P in E1 appeared as strong positive associates of GY/P at both levels. Path analysis identified BY/P and HI as most important direct components and PL and G/P as most important indirect components of GY/P in both conditions. These characters merit due to consideration in formulating effective selection strategy in rainfed lowland rice for developing high yielding varieties for normal and delayed transplanting.

The experiment was conducted to study the Leaf litter decomposition of Western Ghats ecosystem. The study was carried out in the major two types of forest namely tropical dry deciduous forest and tropical moist deciduous forest, which are major ecosystem in the foot hills of Nilgiri biosphere reserve, Tamil Nadu. The rate of leaf litter decomposition was studied using nylon bag buried technique. Rate of decomposition was estimated at soil surface and soil subsurface level. The overall decomposition study results explained that tropical dry deciduous forest recorded the highest rate of decomposition rate in both surface and surface soil. It was observed that in tropical moist deciduous forest composition of leaf litter was highly resistant to degradation.

The present investigation, attempt has been made to combine different type of germplasm in order to identifying the physiological basis of genetic variation in drought tolerance. The High estimates of PCV and GCV were observed for sterile grains per panicle, root dry weight, root volume, root length and fertile grains per panicle under both the conditions High estimates of heritability and genetic advance were recorded for water potential, fertile grains panicle-1, sterile grains panicle-1, straw yield, total biomass at flowering, total biomass at maturity, ACR, root length, root volume and grain yield under both the conditions. Thus, selection practiced for these characters in plant materials under study may be expected to be highly fruitful for isolating high yielding genotypes for irrigated/drought environments. The other traits would be unreliable indices for improvement through selection due to existence of low to moderate transmissibility along with low variability. None of the morpho-physiological traits appeared as strong associates of grain yield in irrigated control condition, whereas four traits, namely, straw yield, panicle length, total biomass at maturity and total biomass at flowering were found to be strong associates of grain yield in water stress condition. In overall consideration, soluble sugar upper root and starch at re-watering in control condition and starch in leaf, starch at re-watering and chlorophyll a in stress condition emerged as most important direct yield components owing to their high order positive direct effects at phenotypic as well as genotypic level.