Soil fertility and water quality play an important role on the productivity of any crop. Soil and water test based fertilizer recommendation will help the farmers to optimize the resources and to improve the productivity. Decision Support System (DSS) was developed for calculating the instrument reading into final value of the test parameters of soil (pH, EC, organic carbon, available nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and chloride) and water (pH, EC, chloride), to suggest the recommended doses of fertilizers for Flue-Cured Virginia (FCV) tobacco crop and to test their suitability for tobacco cultivation. DSS on soil and water analysis for tobacco crop was developed with Visual Basic. Net as Front-end and MS-Access as Back-end. In this system, by entering instrument reading, it will be transformed into soil / water testing value of the concerned parameter which will be compared with recommended values and finally suitability of soil and water for tobacco cultivation will be judged and recommended fertilizer doses for different tobacco zones will be prepared and printed in the prescribed format. This software will be helpful to the researchers / technical personnel in reducing time for preparation of reports, minimizing the errors in manual calculation and improves the precision. This system can be applicable to any soil testing laboratories, where recommendations are given to different crops based on soil and water test values with suitable modifications.
Key words: Decision support system, flue cured tobacco, irrigation water quality, soil testing.
A field experiment was conducted during 2011-13 at Burley Tobacco Research Centre, Kalavacharla, East Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh to study the effect of organic and inorganic manures viz., four formulations of organic manures (neem cake, pongamia cake, filter press cake, poultry manure, FYM and vermicompost in different ratios) and two levels of inorganic nitrogen fertilizers (120 and 160 kg N /ha) on chemical and biochemical quality constituents of burley tobacco. Cured leaf samples from bottom, middle and top leaf positions in different treatments were analysed for chemical and biochemical quality constituents.
Total chlorophylls, carotenoids and nitrate nitrogen varied from 0.116 to 0.388, 0.161 to 0.531, 3.87 to 8.06 mg/g, respectively. Chlorophylls and carotenoids were higher in manure treatments compared to inorganic treatments. Polyphenols viz., chromogenic acid and rutin ranged from 0.58 to 3.89 mg/g and 0.94 to 2.85 mg/g respectively. Polyphenols were less with organic manures compared to inorganic manures. Proline content varied from 0.506 to 3.7 mg/g. Organic manures showed higher proline compared to inorganic Nitrogen. Chemical quality parameters viz., nicotine, reducing sugars and chlorides ranged from 0.4 to 1.73%, 0.49 to 1.93% and 0.39 to 2.84% respectively. Reducing sugars content is high with organic manure application compared to inorganic nutrients. Activity of soil enzymes is high with organic compared to inorganic manures. Manure treatments not only increased the content of carotenoids, proline, reducing sugars, chlorophyll, and free fatty acids which play an important role in the quality of tobacco but also decreased the levels of polyphenols and nitrate nitrogen, which are negatively correlated with the quality of tobacco. Among the different organic manures, manure A (neem cake, pongamia cake, filter press cake, poultry manure, FYM and vermicompost in the ratio of 2:2:2:2:1:1) showed superiority followed by Manure C (neem cake, pongamia cake, filter press cake, poultry manure, FYM and vermicompost in the ratio of 1.5:1.5:5:2:1:2) in their influence on chemical quality parameters of Burley tobacco.
Genetic variability, phenotypic and genotypic coefficient of variation, heritability and genetic advance was studied for eighty three turmeric genotypes collected from different sources of India including local collections. High phenotypic coefficient of variation, and genotypic coefficient of variation was obtained for number of secondary rhizomes, whereas, highest heritability was observed for curcumin content and curing percentage, indicating that these characters are important in crop improvement which are contributed by additive genes where the improvement can be made by simple selection . The selection for these characters will be more effective in, Vontimitta for number of secondary rhizomes, CLL 335 for number of primary rhizomes and yield per plant and curcumin content for T Sundar. Thus results indicated that in turmeric individual plant selection based on desirable characters could be effectively utilized for extraction of superior genotypes.
Insect pests are one of the major constraints in agricultural production, processing and storage. The damage caused by insect pests in agriculture is substantial and farmers have to incur huge monetary losses. Management of insect pests is therefore the only solution to save the crops and other valuable inputs that goes into agricultural production. Vast information on insect pests of different crops and their management is available at different sources. Based on this knowledge, a rule based expert system for insect pests of different agricultural crops was developed. The system is supported by a database containing information about 15 crops with a total of 95 insect pests affecting those crops. The expert system was evaluated following the conventional expert system evaluation methodology. This system provides information and solutions to farmers, scientists, extension workers involved in agriculture development and education. Using this system one can identify the pest and diagnose the problem for speedy and effective decision making in pest management to avoid losses.
India is basically an agriculture country and the dairy sector plays a significant role in supplementing family income and generating employment in the rural areas, particularly among the landless, small and marginal farmers and farm women, besides providing cheap and nutritious food to millions of people. In India, the total milk production is extremely poor in terms of productivity in the world due to lack of proper extension system. Even though, information on various aspects of dairy cattle management is available, they are not reaching the required area of the farm units / farmers. To address this problem, a rule based expert system for dairy cattle management was developed with user friendly menus. This system interacts with users in two ways. As a decision support tool, the user can interact with the system using some arranged rules which are collection of if / then rules, collected from experts in the veterinary field. Using these rules, a knowledge base was designed for the expert system and programming codes were writeen in VB. Net. The proposed expert system provides instant access of the required knowledge on selected parameters, viz. feeding, breeding, diseases, cattle shed management, milking, fodder cultivation and health management. This expert system is useful as an online guide to the users who are involved in animal husbandry and dairy management.
Simple sequence repeats (SSRs) in organellar genomes offers better opportunity in understanding the phylogenetic relationships among important Solanaceae crop species. Even though organellar genomes of some crop species are available in the public domain, a comparative analysis of SSRs has been reported only for major cereals. Since Solanaceae has been proved to be an excellent model for comparative genomics, there is immense need to understand the phylogenetic relationships by comparative analysis of organellar SSRs. The purpose of this study was to understand the organization and distribution of SSRs in the genic and intergenic regions of organellar genomes of Solanaceous species viz., tomato, potato, tobacco and progenitors of tobacco and demonstrate the utility of organellar SSR markers in phylogenetic analysis.
Unlike other crops, tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) deserves special mention as the leaf quality is important for its commercial value and export. The leaf is the end-value product and is affected by a number of abiotic factors (both physical and chemical) during the crop growth and curing in addition to biotic ones leading to the economic losses to farmers. Symptoms of the tobacco leaf affected by abiotic factors sometimes resemble biotic factors, misleading in identification of actual causes for taking remedial measures. The information on abiotic factors on tobacco and their symptoms was established and an expert system was developed for identification and management of abiotic stresses in tobacco. The expert system was developed using Visual Basic.Net as front-end application and Oracle as back-end with user-friendly menus. It enables viewer/farmer to identify his problem with different abiotic stress symptoms displayed and identify problem as well as remedial measures.
'%3e%3ccircle r='20' fill='%23008'/%3e%3ccircle r='17.5' fill='%23fff'/%3e%3ccircle r='3.5' fill='%23008'/%3e%3cg id='d'%3e%3cg id='c'%3e%3cg id='b'%3e%3cg id='a' fill='%23008'%3e%3ccircle r='.875' transform='rotate(7.5 -8.75 133.5)'/%3e%3cpath d='M0 17.5.6 7 0 2l-.6 5L0 17.5z'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' transform='rotate(15)'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23b' transform='rotate(30)'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23c' transform='rotate(60)'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23d' transform='rotate(120)'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23d' transform='rotate(-120)'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/svg%3e)