Cultivation Of Food Crops Research Articles

Optimization of aquatic-terrestrial ecosystem in relation to soil nitrogen status for the cultivation of fish and aquatic food crops of the Indian subtropics.

A case study was undertaken during wet and postwet seasons to improve the perennial and alternate submerged saucer-shaped ponded lands (tal and semi-tal lands) in the coasts and northeastern plains of the Indian subtropics through pisciculture and cultivation of starch- and protein-rich aquatic food crops like water chestnut (Trapa bispinosa Roxb.) and makhana or fox nut (Euryale ferox Salisb.). The study revealed that the physico-chemical properties of soils (pH, organic C, organic matter, available N, P, and K) as well as quality of water (pH, EC, BOD, COD, CO3+, HCO3-, NO3-N, SO4-S, and Cl-), growing fish, makhana, and water chestnut was remarkably influenced by different moisture regimes and exhibited a significant improvement of soil health. The amount of organic C, available N, P, and K content were found significantly highest in the treatment where makhana was grown under alternate flooding and drying situation with a depth >2 m as compared to other treatments. Such enrichment of soil fertility, particularly in available N and P content, might be due to the accumulation of considerable amounts of biomass and fish excreta and their subsequent decomposition in situ in the soils. Therefore, the present study suggests that the N-enriched soil may effectively be utilized further for growing subsequent arable crops surroundings during summer season, which not only saves the amount of applied N fertilizer but also increases the apparent N efficiency with simultaneous increase in yield, and would benefit the farmers in this region.

Gene sequence and properties of an s-triazine ring-cleavage enzyme from Pseudomonas sp. strain NRRLB-12227.

Pesticides based on the s-triazine ring structure are widely used in cultivation of food crops. Cleavage of the s-triazine ring is an important step in the mineralization of s-triazine compounds and hence in their complete removal from the environment. Cyanuric acid amidohydrolase cleaves cyanuric acid (2,4,6-trihydroxy-s-triazine), which yields carbon dioxide and biuret; the biuret is subject to further metabolism, which yields CO(2) and ammonia. The trzD gene encoding cyanuric acid amidohydrolase was cloned into pMMB277 from Pseudomonas sp. strain NRRLB-12227, a strain that is capable of utilizing s-triazines as nitrogen sources. Hydrolysis of cyanuric acid was detected in crude extracts of Escherichia coli containing the cloned gene by monitoring the disappearance of cyanuric acid and the appearance of biuret by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). DEAE and hydrophobic interaction HPLC were used to purify cyanuric acid amidohydrolase to homogeneity, and a spectrophotometric assay for the purified enzyme was developed. The purified enzyme had an apparent K(m) of 0.05 mM for cyanuric acid at pH 8.0. The enzyme did not cleave any other s-triazine or hydroxypyrimidine compound, although barbituric acid (2,4, 6-trihydroxypyrimidine) was found to be a strong competitive inhibitor. Neither the nucleotide sequence of trzD nor the amino acid sequence of the gene product exhibited a significant level of similarity to any known gene or protein.

Effect of salinity on growth, chlorophyll content, and flag leaf area of rice (Oryza sativa L.) genotypes

Rice is the most important food crop, feeding more than half of the world's population. To feed this ever-growing population, an increase in the cultivation of food crops is essential, which ispossible by increasing cultivable lands. Lands in Pakistan that are available for cultivation suffer from problems of salinity/sodicity. So we urgently need to select or develop salt-tolerant rice varieties or methods to increase theyield per unit area.

Potential use of lake cyanobacterial biomass as fertilizer for the cultivation of food crops

This study points to the utility of Aulosira fertilissima and algal biomass of the Upper and Lower lake of Bhopal as a cheap and effective green manure for rice and mustard.

Medicine and the US embargo against Cuba

To the Editor. —In his Commentary, Dr Chelala 1 offers a laudable if naive approach to improving Cuba's health situation, suggesting that providing food and medicine will help. That is like treating the complications of diabetes and not the hyperglycemia. The lack of food and medicine is not, popular wisdom notwithstanding, the result of the embargo, but of mismanagement by a centralized collective farming system and by the crushing economic burden of maintaining the most powerful armed forces in Latin America. 2 Cuba's widespread, rich, and varied soils, 200 inland rivers, and tropical rainfall allow for year-round cultivation of vegetables and other food crops, 3 yet only recently have farmers been allowed to grow some staples on small plots, not enough to meet the population's needs for vegetables and protein. Cuba should permit farmers to cultivate the land, without restrictions on what crops to grow or which livestock to raise,

Indigenous knowledge and economic production: The food crop cultivation, preservation and storage methods of a West African community

This paper examines specific cultivation, preservation and storage techniques for some selected staple crops in the food farming community of Ayirebi, near Akyem Oda, in southeastern Ghana. The traditional subsistence methods of Ayirebi farming households are well adapted to the social and geographical environments of the region. The long‐term future of developing African communities may well lie in building up thriving rural communities producing the food needed by the wider population. However, before this can be achieved, the particular food cultivation strategies of local communities need to be understood. Micro level studies such as this one will provide specific data vital to formulating and implementing a general agenda for national agricultural and economic development.

Urban Agriculture: Research Questions and Zambian Evidence

The cultivation of food crops within the overall boundaries of towns and cities is not new, but has been forgotten or ignored in the last 20 years, while urbanisation has, it is thought, absorbed a disproportionate share of national resources. Can, however, an alternative form of urban development, less greedy of financial and natural assets, capable of satisfying the basic needs of the population and of reducing the vulnerability of the poorest, be envisaged, and is the food and energy system an appropriate starting point?1The first stage in studying any neglected area is to review existing evidence and policy, in order to reveal gaps and suggest avenues for future enquiry, policy formulation, and experiment.2In this article, the evidence presented will be from Zambia, and it will be the task of further research to assess the relevance of these findings to other towns and cities in the region.

A comparison of soil properties under different landuse types in a part of the Nigerian cocoa belt

The changes that take place in topsoil properties after the tropical rain forest has been replaced by fallow (resulting from food crops cultivation) and tree crops are considered in a part of southwestern Nigeria known for the cultivation of food crops, cocoa and kola on separate plots. The study clearly shows that water holding capacity, organic matter content, total nitrogen, calcium, magnesium and cation exchange capacity (C.E.C.) under fallow, cocoa and kola differ significantly from those under forest. These results indicate that once the tropical rainforest is removed the soil-vegetation system is disrupted significanctly. The study also shows that water holding capacity, calcium, potassium and C.E.C. are significantly different between fallow and the tree crops while no soil property differs significantly between cocoa and kola. These results serve to show that under fallow soil appears better protected than under cocoa and kola while the latter tree crops could be deemed to be similar in their absorption pattern of soil nutrients. The reasons for these significant differences are discussed.

Breaking up the bottlenecks in food-crop and cotton cultivation in northern Côte d'Ivoire

IntroductionIt is widely recognised that seasonal labour bottlenecks present major obstacles to peasant farmers seeking to expand agricultural output in sub-Saharan Africa. Evidence from Nigeria and Sierra Leone, for example, reveals that labour shortages and limited income to hire off-farm labour have historically constrained rural producers from intensifying and enlarging their agricultural operations (Norman et al., 1979: 42–7; Watts, 1983: 202–3; Richards, 1985: 96). Many attempts by colonial and contemporary African States to promote food crop and export crop production failed, in part, because of peasant resistance to the threat of subsistence insecurity associated with labour conflicts in the agricultural calendar. Richards's (1986) study of the failure of a series of labour-intensive wet rice cultivation projects in central Sierra Leone illustrates the degree to which peasant agricultural practices represent adjustments to labour-supply problems. Given the pervasiveness and importance of seasonal labour constraints in African agricultural systems, it is surprising that ‘few studies have provided insights into the adjustment in labor use resulting from the introduction of cash crops and new technologies’ (Eicher and Baker, 1982: 99).

Post-Emancipation Protest in the Caribbean: The “Belmanna Riots” in Tobago, 1876

Abbreviations CO Colonial Office Series, Public Record Office, Kew SM Special Magistrate When slavery in the British West Indies was formally ended in 1833, the great majority of the freed men and women remained within the orbit of the plantation system. Even if many succeeded in establishing themselves as small-holders who cultivated food crops on their own account, most were driven by their cash needs to work part-time on the estates. It would be naive to think that the managerial attitudes and practices developed during slavery were abandoned with the end of the legal institution; the ill-disguised contempt and hostility of many plantation staff, their lack of sensitivity towards the labourers' new status, were constant sources of friction in the post-slavery decades. In addition, legal freedom brought a host of new irritants - wage rates, wage stoppages and irregular payment, the size of tasks, the mode of payment by day or by task - to complicate relations between labour and management.1 The result of these problems, and other, more specific grievances, was a series of labour protests, disturbances and riots in the post-slavery decades throughout the Caribbean. If revolts were an inescapable consequence of formal slavery, demonstrations and riots by labourers seeking to defend their rights and to protect their hard- won gains were equally characteristic of the difficult post-Emancipation period. Tobago, which was permanently British after 1814, was linked administratively to Barbados and the Windward Islands in a loose union after 1833. Several labour protests and riots took place in this group of islands in the forty or fifty years after Emancipation. In Dominica a serious rising occurred in 1 844 in protest against the taking of a census, an action which many Dominican freedmen interpreted as the first step in their re -enslavement. In 1856, peasants who were technically squatters on Crown Lands resisted attempts to evict them at Batalie on Dominica's Leeward coast, and attacked the policemen who were trying to execute the order. Towards the end of the century, in 1 893, peasants of La Plain village violently protested against the eviction of one of their number for defaulting on his land tax in a time of serious rural depression. The Navy had to be summoned and four persons lost their lives St Vincent experienced riots in 1 855 sparked off by a severe judicial punishment inflicted on a woman for stealing canes worth one or two shillings, and a serious labour disturbance took place in 1862.4 In St. Lucia, the public flogging of a 14-year-old boy from a respectable coloured family for perjury triggered off riots in Castries in 1844; as in the Dominica Guerre Negre of the same year rumours spread in St. Lucia that slavery would be re-imposed. More serious was the St. Lucia riot of March 1 849 in protest against the land tax imposed on small-holders whose cash incomes were extremely small: eight persons lost their lives in this riot. 5 Even in Barbados, the headquarters of the Windward Islands government, where the island's complacent ruling class traditionally represented the labourers as docile and contented, the pressures of extreme poverty led to occasional explosions. In 1872 a Bridgetown crowd looted the cargo of a wrecked ship as it was brought ashore; the looters only dispersed when the police fired, killed one, and arrested 77 persons.6 In April 1876, the Confederation Riots broke out, and although political issues were probably most salient, there is little doubt that more traditional grievances such as low and irregular wages, oppression by individual plantation managers - as well as stark poverty - played their part Tobago The spectrum of grievances and different forms of oppression that led the Windward Islands Creoles to protest violently in these decades were also present in Tobago, the smallest island in the group, where the total population was only 17,054 by 1871. …

Impact of Weather Analysis on Agricultural Production and Planning Decisions for the Semiarid Areas of Kenya

Abstract Kenya's current 4% rate of population growth requires cultivation of food crops by smallholder farmers in ever drier zones of semiarid lands. Rainfall is limited, variable and unpredictable, but maize, widely known for susceptibility to drought, remains the staple and favorite food crop. A case study is presented in which “effective rainfall” for Katumani Composite B-type maize, grown at Katumani, Machakos District, is evaluated for each of the 48 wet seasons in the 24-year record. The newly developed analysis takes into account rainfall, evaporation, soil depth and water holding capacity, and growth characteristics of the crop influencing water uptake and yield. Conclusions are: 1) The analysis evaluates suitability of a given crop for production in any location where rainfall and evaporation records are available. 2) Dates of onset of the rains at Katumani are sortable into periods termed “early” (implies expectation of high to medium water adequacy for maize production), “late” (medium to low ...

タンザニアの栄養とそれに影響を及ぼす諸要因の考察

It is unfortunately true that many people in Tanzania are still suffering from malnutrition despite of the vast expenditure of time, money and effort in attempts to improve the nutritional status. Today, to eradicate malnutrition is, therefore, recognized as one of major aims to be urgently achieved in the national development plan in Tanzania. Thus it could be worthwhile to review the nutritional status and its influential factors in Tanzania in order to understand the entire problem correctly.Various clinical and dietary survey data clearly show that the nutritional status of Tanzanian people is generally considerably low as compared to that of those in developed countries and that the incidence of various types of malnutrition is high in the country. Among different nutritional disorders existing in Tanzania, Protein-Calorie Malnutrition (PCM) appears to be the most important disorder because of its wide distribution, its vulnerable group which is mainly children who are the future capital, and its complexity of causation.Influential factors on nutrition discussed in this paper are summerized as follows.From the demographic point of view, as commonly seen in developing countries, the rapid increase of population is a considerable problem especially in relation to the demand and supply of food. High dependency ratio in the population undoubtedly affects the nutritional status particularly of children under five years and, pregnant and lactating women owing to their low social status.With regard to dietary factors, it is noticed that Tanzanian diet is not necessarily less nutritive but insufficient in amount. It is, therefore, thought that the nutritional status could be substantially improved by simply increasing the daily food intake of individuals. The dietary improvement not only in quantity but also in quality, is, however, certainly desirable to improve the nutritional status particularly for those whose staple foods are banana and starchy roots.In connection with the population increase, the per capita food production of Tanzania tends to decline in recent years despite of the increase of gross food production. Taking this fact and population increase into consideration, it is obvious that paying more effort to increase the yield per unit area under cultivation of food crops is inevitable in the long run. In addition to raising the food production, the proper conservation of food currently produced is considered to be of great help to increase the amount of food available resulting better nutritional status. Concerning the food production, it should be added that the land tenure system of Tanzania which enable people to obtain farming land readily is acting an important role to increase the food availability of individuals.From the socio-economical point of view, though there is not a remarkable gap between the rich and the poor, the presence of unequal intra-family distribution of income tends to create the malnourishment of dependent group in a family. It is also noticed that with economic development people do not always improve their nutrition. Food habit based on long established cultural patterns is often limiting the food availability of a certain group of the population in Tanzania. As a matter of fact, that socio-economic factors, particularly poverty and ignorance as primary causes of malnutrition, underlie most other causal factors makes the improvement of nutritional status difficult.In view of environmental factors, it is observed that inadequate water supply in quality and quantity is highly related to lowering the nutritional status. The availability of water in Tanzania is actually one of the most important factors to limit agricultural production as well as human life. It is noticed that as a result of “villagisation”, the social environment in rural area has been considerably improved particularly in terms of the access to medical and educational facilities. The

The feral buffalo gourd,Cucurbita foetidissima

The feral species,Cucurbita foetidissima, the perennial Buffalo gourd, has the potential of becoming a cultivated food crop, producing seeds rich in edible oil and protein. It also produces an extensive storage root system rich in starch. It has evolved in the arid regions of North America and is adapted to growing on arid to semiarid lands, which constitute much of the world’s land mass, lands now marginal for crop production.

Grassland Management in New Zealand

G RASS production in New Zealand is basic, not only to agriculture but also to the entire national economy. On a land area (66 million acres) slightly smaller than that of Colorado, but with only a little more than 42 million acres occupied, New Zealand supports a sheep population (33 million head) greater than that of the United States plus about 5 million cattle and smaller numbers of hogs, horses and goats. This entire livestock population is a product of the pastures. Even the pigs are grazed and supplemented with skim milk and whey from the dairy industry. Of the 2 million acres under cultivation, more than one-third is in “plantations” of introduced timber trees, chiefly Monterey pine (Pinus radiata), and nearly onethird is in temporary pasture crops, leaving only about one-half million acres for cash field crops. In New Zealand, “grassland agriculture” is not simply a term designating some far-distant goal toward which to strive. Theirs is, in fact, a grassland agriculture in the highest sense, an agriculture in which the operation of all but a few specialized farms (fruit, truck, tobacco, etc.) is based on grass production and utilization. Grassland agriculture has in some cases been carried too far. The economy of the nation and the welfare of the farmers themselves would be benefited by wider use of cultivated food crops in rotation with the grasses. It is now

The Problems of the Utilization of Slope Lands in Japan

In Japan, where a dense population is crowded together on a few small plains, it is not surprising that the use of sloping land in the mountains, which comprise 67% of Japan's area, has been promoted in various ways. In some regions the cultivation of steep land is amazingly intense. In this essay, only upland fields of considerable slope are discussed. The categories treated are 1) the steep field as a special type of upland field, 2) the regional distribution of steep upland fields, and 3) the problems of their future development.1. Upland fields in general are subordinate in importance to paddy fields, but in some regions they are of first. importance. Broadly speaking, there are two sorts of upland fields, those on flat elevated land, and those on steep slopes. A survey was made in 1942 to classify upland fields by degree of slope, as follows : those with 5° of slope, those whith 5°-15°, and those with more than 15° of slope. Those in the latter category comprised about 50, 000 hectares, or nearly one-fifth of the total area of all upland fields. In fact, the greater part of these had a declivity of 20°-30°, and some reached 35° of slope. The soils of these fields, which comprise 2% of the mountain lands of Japan, are infertile lithosols.Figures 1 to 4 show the distribution of steep upland fields : Figure 1 ……the ratio of steep fields to all upland fields, by prefecture ;Figure 2 ……the ratio of upland fields to all cultivated fields ;Figure 3 ……the ratio of steep fields to all upland fields, by gun (district);Figure 4. ……the relative density of steep fielde to total area.The most important steep upland field regions are the mountainous regions in the Outer Zone of Southwest Japan, namely Shikoku and the Kii Peninsula ; the Inland Sea Region in the Inner Zone ; and peninsular regions of Kyushu. The mountainous regions of Central Japan are secondary to the above areas in importance.2. The development of steep upland fields has been mainly related to self-sufficient food crops both on intensively cultivated permanent fields and on the much less important extensively cultivated shifting fields. Two morphological types of land use are distinguished : a) use of the natural slope with no modification, a type prevalent in Central Japan, and d) modification by terracing, a type dominant in Southwest Japan.In the use of natural slopes, contour cultivation is strictly adhered to, and much organic material is added to maintain the soil fertility. The yield of crops such as barley, wheat and soy beans is higher on these fields than on terraced fields. Mulberry trees are grown in large areas, and in some localities the Konnyaku tuber (Amorphophallus konjac) is grown intercropped with barley. On terraced slope lands, bench terraces are constructed on the steeper slopes, an sloping terraces on the less steep slopes. Typical examples of these are seen in southwest Shikoku. The strong intensity of precipitation is one of the most important factors that make steep land cultivable only by making terraces. The main crops are barley and wheat in winter, and sweet potatoes in summer. These terraces are subject to soil erosion on the one hand, and to drought on the other, , resulting in meager yields of all crops except sweet potatoes.3. To improve the utilization of steep lands by agriculturists, it is necessary to plant profitable cash crops, such as sweet oranges, konnyaku tubers, and mulberry trees. The fundamental weakness, of steep upland field cultivation lies in the extensive cultivation of self-sufficient food crops, which require much labor per unit of area, and yield relatively little in return.

India Must Grow More Food

It is almost an year since we met last for a similar purpose. As you are all aware, we have turned the corner and started pounding the Axis. Last week, Italy dropped her pilot and Mussolini left the scene. While we are happy and hopeful about the outcome of the War, our living conditions have been causing much concern to the public at large and the Government. We have had a year of famine. Our food production had been insufficient to meet the demands. At the same time, unscrupulous people hoarding the grains without consideration for the starvation around them, have created difficulties by reducing the supplies in the market. The cry for food is great. The responsibilities of the Agricultural Department have become heavy and we are striving our best to increase the food supplies. We are trying to expand cultivation by bringing unculti- vated lands under the plough. The ryots are permitted to grow grain crops on these lands free of assessment. Favourable terms for food cultiva- tion as, free cultivation of tank beds with vegetables and certain dry crops when there is no water in the tanks, the cultivation of railway lands under reasonable rental, and free cultivation of backyards with dry food crops and vegetables, have been offered. We are offering free seeds and manures to poor ryols. We have opened our purse wide and are granting loans for sinking new wells or repairing old ones and making them fit for use. Government have granted remission of assessment for three years for the cultivation of food crops under such wells and have said that ryofs may begin repaying the loan from the fourth year onwards. We are granting loans free of interest for purchase of manures and improved seeds up to a maximum of Rs. 50 in each case. With such a large number of concessions, Government have put before you the opportunity for growing more food crops and feeding the hungry people.

The Botany of Crop Plants A Text and Reference Book

TN the prefatory words of the author, “the issuance of this book has been stimulated in part by the expressed need…for a text or reference book which will give the student a knowledge of the botany of common orchard, garden, and field crops.…” A text-book which achieved this object would be indeed a boon, for, with the exception of Percival's “Agricultural Botany,” we know of no book which treats of economic plants in such a way as to expound the principles of botanical science and to provide knowledge directly useful to the person interested in the cultivation of food crops. The Botany of Crop Plants. A Text and Reference Book. By Prof. W. W. Robbins. Pp. xx + 681. (Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's Son and Co., 1917.) Price 2 dollars net.