Role In Agricultural Development Research Articles

Crop HTP Technologies: Applications and Prospects

In order to rapidly breed high-quality varieties, an increasing number of plant researchers have identified the functions of a large number of genes, but there is a serious lack of research on plants’ phenotypic traits. This severely hampers the breeding process and exacerbates the dual challenges of scarce resources and resource development and utilization. Currently, research on crop phenotyping has gradually transitioned from traditional methods to HTP technologies, highlighting the high regard scientists have for these technologies. It is well known that different crops’ phenotypic traits exhibit certain differences. Therefore, in rapidly acquiring phenotypic data and efficiently extracting key information from massive datasets is precisely where HTP technologies play a crucial role in agricultural development. The core content of this article, starting from the perspective of crop phenomics, summarizes the current research status of HTP technology, both domestically and internationally; the application of HTP technology in above-ground and underground parts of crops; and its integration with precision agriculture implementation and multi-omics research. Finally, the bottleneck and countermeasures of HTP technology in the current agricultural context are proposed in order to provide a new method for phenotype research. HTP technologies dynamically monitor plant growth conditions with multi-scale, comprehensive, and automated assessments. This enables a more effective exploration of the intrinsic “genotype-phenotype-environment” relationships, unveiling the mechanisms behind specific biological traits. In doing so, these technologies support the improvement and evolution of superior varieties.

Structure and labor use pattern among cocoa farmers in Ondo State, Nigeria

Human labour is about the only main source of labour available to smallholder farmers in Nigeria. Smallholder farmers contribute over 85% of domestic agricultural output in Nigeria, hence, human labour accounts for the domestic food supply in Nigeria. Therefore, the need to continue supplying food for the ever-growing Nigerian population anchors on human labour productivity. In Nigerian agriculture, hired labour is predominantly used. Human labour plays a very significant role in agricultural development, especially in developing countries where technological development is still very low. In view of the importance of labour in agricultural production, this study was designed to investigate the structure and use pattern of farm labour in the study area. The study was carried out in Ondo state, Nigeria. A multistage sampling technique was used to collect data from 160 farmers. After sorting for missing data, 144 cocoa farmers’ data were used for analysis in this study. Seventy-five percent of the total
 respondents were above 50 years of age and about 25.01% of the total respondents were 50 years and below. The majority (79.17%) of the farmers were men. Also, 75.07% of the respondents had a formal level of education. In the study contract type of labour is majorly used for most activities in cocoa farming while cooperative labour was seldom used. Activities such as land clearing (75.0%), planting (83.32%), weeding (95.83%), application of chemicals (91.67%), removal of mistletoes (87.50%), harvesting of cocoa pods (87.50%), conveyance of cocoa pods to the pod breaking point (95.83%), breaking of cocoa pods (100%) and conveyance of cocoa beans to the point of fermentation (88.33%) were majorly carried out by contract labour. Male labour was mostly utilized for all the activities as indicated by most farmers. Female labour was sparingly utilized for some activities such as land clearing (8.33%), planting (0%), application of chemicals (8.33%), spraying of chemicals (4.17%), removal of mistletoes (0%) and harvesting of cocoa pods (12.5%). The study recommended that funds should be made available to farmers to engage in contract labour and also there should be the need to use equipment and machinery to reduce drudgery.

Effect of agricultural extension on technology adoption by Palestinian farmers under Israeli occupation in the West Bank

Even during the conflict, agricultural extension by the Palestinian Authority has played an important role in agricultural development in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The Ministry of Agriculture of the Palestinian Authority provided the necessary agricultural extension services for Palestinian farmers affected by the Israeli settlements and Segregation Wall. Despite such importance of agricultural extension, few quantitative studies have examined its effect on Palestinian farmers. Therefore, the objective of this study was to quantify the effect of agricultural extension on technology adoption by Palestinian farmers for appropriate evaluation of the agricultural policies by the Palestinian Authority. The microdata of 79,446 agricultural holdings from the Agricultural Census 2010, which was the only microdata officially published and available at the time of this study, was used. Then, the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method was employed to mitigate the endogenous bias caused by self-selection by farmers in receiving the agricultural extension. The results showed that agricultural extension has positively and significantly affected the adoption of five technologies, namely improved crop varieties, chemical fertilizers, organic fertilizers, pesticides, and biological control. The estimated increase in the adoption rate of those technologies as the average treatment effects on the treated (ATT) by the nearest-neighbor matching method were by 7.1, 7.7, 5.4, 6.8, and 3.8 percentage points respectively. This study proved that agricultural extension promoted the adoption of those technologies even in the conflict. Therefore, agricultural extension by the Palestinian Authority plays an important role in farming by Palestinian farmers. In order to maintain and improve farmers’ livelihoods sustainably, it is necessary to continue the agricultural extension by the Palestinian Authority in the future, considering the behavior of farmers.

UDA-FlyRecog: Unsupervised domain adaptation for drosophila cross-domain recognition model

Drosophila is an important quarantine pest, and its identification plays a crucial role in agricultural development. To address the issue of significant style variations in Drosophila image samples collected from different environments, which results in poor performance when applying models trained on the source domain to the target domain, this paper proposes a domain-adaptive model for cross-domain Drosophila recognition (UDA-FlyRecog). This model combines global feature alignment and class-aware feature alignment methods, and adopts a cyclic iterative training approach to mitigate the effects of domain shift. Experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves the highest accuracy improvement of up to 16.7% compared to other methods on Drosophila datasets collected from both laboratory and natural environments, indicating promising practical applications.

Analysis of Farmers' Group Capabilities in the City of Sawahlunto

Agriculture plays an important role in the Indonesian economy, especially in rural areas which are dominated by farmers whose income is from agricultural products. Increasing farmer welfare is the key to agricultural development. This can be achieved through increasing agricultural productivity, access to efficient markets, and developing human resources and farmer institutions. Farmer groups are a key element in agricultural development, enabling the exchange of information, training and collaboration between farmers. Farmer Group capability class assessment is an important tool in understanding the dynamics and development of this group. In Sawahlunto City, the majority of Farmer Groups are still in the beginner and advanced classes, with only a few reaching the intermediate class. Many factors influence the ability of Farmer Groups, including changes in conditions in the field, structural changes, and the formation of groups just to get government assistance. Therefore, assessing the ability class of Farmer Groups must be the basis for coaching and empowering this group, so that it can play a more effective role in agricultural development.

Role of Women Farmers Group on Agriculture Development in Jeruksawit Village

Agriculture development requires the role of many institutions. Achieving agricultural development is needed to develop economics. At the regional level, agriculture is one of the primary sources of livelihood. We need to solve problems in agriculture to achieve agricultural development. One institution that will be observed in this study is the women farmers group, their role in solving agricultural issues, and agriculture development strategy in the village. This study analyzes women farmers' role in agriculture development strategy in Jeruksawit Village, Gondangrejo, Karanganyar, Central Java. The primary research method used in this study is descriptive with an explanatory research approach. The location was chosen in Jeruksawit Village, Gondangrejo, Karanganyar, Central Java. The study was carried out from November to December 2021. The place was chosen because there is a women farmers group and some problems with agricultural developments. The data used are primary and secondary. The preliminary data were collected through in-depth interviews, field observation, and triangulation. To assess information for primary data, this study uses key informants as the information source. The secondary data were collected from Central Bureau Statistics Central Java, literature review, and farmers group archives. The analysis method used is the analysis of Miles and Huberman, which is carried out through data reduction, display of data collection, and verification. The results of this study show that the women farmers group plays an essential role in agriculture development by training farmers to increase farmers' education, doing comparative studies to understand agriculture better, providing partnerships between farmers, and providing agriculture counseling.

Empirical Explorations of the problems and Prospects of Land Ownership in Rural Areas of Bangladesh

This paper investigates and empirically explores the problems and prospects of land ownership grounded in rural areas of Bangladesh. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used and data were collected by using the tools and techniques of social survey and Focus Group Discussion (FGD) along with Key Informant Interview (KII). Achieving ownership of land, forms of ownership, the mortgage system, and the lease system were identified as both the problems and potentials in this study based on certain social contexts and rural socio-economic institutions. The research also finds that the problems of land ownership have a significant role in agricultural development, and it is a hindrance to the new and becoming land owners. Social class on the basis of land ownership has been explicitly clear in the study area. 

Application of Linier Regression Method in Analysis of Farm Business Credit on The Welfare of Farmers in Kedung Lengkong Village, Dlangu Sub-District, Mojokerto District

The role of the agricultural sector can be optimized if it is supported by an integrated sustainable system and capital support. In this study the problems to be discussed are 1) Capital is a problem faced by farmers, 2) Many farmers are able to increase crop yields if they have sufficient capital, 3) Without sufficient capital, farmers will not be able to increase the productivity of their crops. To overcome the problem of lack of capital, farmers borrow money from both formal and informal financial institutions, the purpose of this study is to determine the effect of the efficiency of agricultural credit distribution on the welfare of farmers in the agricultural sector. Agricultural credit plays a very important role in agricultural development: if production increases, farmers' income will also increase. In the research applying quantitative methods where the number of samples is 100 people. With a population of 187 people are farmers in Kedung Lengkong Village, Dlangu District, Mojokerto Regency. In the research the analysis applied is simple regression in order to determine the effect of credit performance on the welfare of farmers. The results of hypothesis testing that credit has a positive influence on happiness is worth the regression coefficient of 0.291. Farmers are helped by credit to buy fertilizers, seeds and others according to agribusiness needs so as to increase profits, as a source of welfare.

Research on the current situation of rural poverty alleviation and future development innovation in the era of big data

Poverty eradication has always been the focus of national development, along with the development of the times, big data is more widely used in the application, combining big data with agricultural development will bring good effects to rural development.[1][2] Improving farm production, increasing the number of sales and saving costs will be an important way to get out of poverty, and big data plays a great role in agricultural development, combining big data technology with agriculture, introducing market information, planting methods and talent introduction into the countryside to better help rural areas get out of poverty.

Low Hysteresis and Fatigue-Resistant Polyvinyl Alcohol/Activated Charcoal Hydrogel Strain Sensor for Long-Term Stable Plant Growth Monitoring.

Flexible strain sensor as a measurement tool plays a significant role in agricultural development by long-term stable monitoring of the dynamic progress of plant growth. However, existing strain sensors still suffer from severe drawbacks, such as large hysteresis, insufficient fatigue resistance, and inferior stability, limiting their broad applications in the long-term monitoring of plant growth. Herein, we fabricate a novel conductive hydrogel strain sensor which is achieved through uniformly dispersing the conductive activated charcoal (AC) in high-viscosity polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) solution forming a continuous conductive network and simple preparation by freezing-thawing. The as-prepared strain sensor demonstrates low hysteresis (<1.5%), fatigue resistance (fatigue threshold of 40.87 J m−2), and long-term sensing stability upon mechanical cycling. We further exhibit the integration and application of PVA-AC strain sensor to monitor the growth of plants for 14 days. This work may offer an effective strategy for monitoring plant growth with conductive hydrogel strain sensor, facilitating the advancement of agriculture.

Alokasi Pemanfaatan Lahan Komoditas Unggulan Tanaman Pangan di Kabupaten Purwakarta

Purwakarta Regency is one of the regencies in West Java Province that plays an essential role in agricultural development. One of the efforts to encourage sustainable agricultural development is by developing potential commodities so that scenarios can be drawn up that are in accordance with the region's potential. Optimum land use scenarios with several constraint targets need to be prepared by considering food needs, ecological sustainability, and farm income. This study aims to identify land available for food commodities and simulate the land use allocation of food commodities in Purwakarta Regency to meet food needs, farm income, and tolerance for erosion. Location quotient index, shift-share analysis, land suitability &amp; capability analysis, and Multiple Goals Programming were used to achieve research objectives. The identified leading commodities are peanuts, cassava, and sweet potato. We suggest 15 classes of land available for optimum land use allocation. Space optimization is organized into four scenarios considering erosion control targets, meeting farmers' minimum incomes, and rice production. The smallest erosion is 13,159 tons/ha/year, while the highest possible income is IDR300,500,000,000. The highest rice production is 202.070 tonsGKP, cassava production is 16,919 tons, sweet potato is 2.014 tons, and peanut production is 531 tons. Achieving production targets can support agricultural development and food security improvement programs through sustainable production improvement. Keywords: erosion, farming, income, land suitability, MGP

AN OVERVIEW OF RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PROFILE OF RURAL WOMEN AND THEIR PARTICIPATION PATTERN IN HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION SYSTEM

In agrarian country like India, women play a very important role in development of agriculture and contribute three fourth of the total labour required. To study the association between profile of rural women and participation pattern in household production system, an experiment with ex post facto research design was conducted in three talukas named Vansda, Chikhali and Khergam of Navsari district. The interview schedule was prepared and pre-tested to collect the data. Total 120 respondents were surveyed through personal interview technique from their home, farm, office or any other workplace. It was found that age and type of family had negative and significant relationship with participation in household production system. Independent variables like education, size of family, size of land holding had non-significant relationship with participation in household production system. While, Social participation, innovativeness and self-confidence had positive and significant relationship with participation in household production system. Remaining independent variables like farming experience, extension participation, source of information, risk orientation and market orientation had positive and highly significant relationship with participation in household production system.

The influence of trade facilitation on agricultural product exports of China: empirical evidence from ASEAN countries

The trade of agricultural products plays an essential role in agricultural development. Agricultural trade is more complicated and diversified than other industrial products, influenced by product characteristics for perishable. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is one of the most important markets for China’s agricultural exports. This study aimed to analyze the impact of trade facilitation indicators on China’s agricultural exports to ASEAN countries. A gravity model was adopted by taking the volume of Chinese agricultural exports to ASEAN countries from 2006–2020 as the dependent variable. Indicators such as economic freedom (EF), trade across borders (TAB), and infrastructure quality (Infra) were introduced that were representing trade facilitation as the core independent variable. Also, an empirical analysis was carried out using a mixed regression model. The results show that the three proxy indicators of trade facilitation had a significantly positive impact on the scale of China’s agricultural exports to the ASEAN market. The results could play a guiding role in strengthening the cooperation between China and the ASEAN regarding trade facilitation and expansion of the scale of agricultural trade.

Factors affecting farmers’ decision to participate in various agricultural related information sources in Ethiopia

Information communication technology is energetic for rural transformation and plays a great role in agricultural development. However, there are factors affecting farmers’ use of information. This study focused on determinants of various agricultural information sources. Household survey from 165 respondents and multi-stage sampling techniques were used. Multivariate probit model regression output shows that social participation and distance are significantly related with the use of all information sources at different significance levels. Age, extension contact, education, sex, credit access, land size, non/off-farm income and farm income are significant with the use of different information sources at different significance levels. The Wald test (χ2 (56) = 101.39, p = 0.000) is significant, which indicates that MVP model fits the data. LR (χ2 (6) = 232.942, Prob > χ2 = 0.0000) indicates the goodness of fit of the model. For more use of agriculture-related information, Ministry of Agriculture and NGOs need to intervene in rural agricultural programs.

RANCANG BANGUN SISTEM INFORMASI KEPUASAN PETANI TERHADAP KINERJA PENYULUH PERTANIAN BERBASIS WEBSITE DI BALAI PENYULUHAN PERTANIAN SITUBONDO

Agricultural extension plays a very important role in agricultural development. The availability of extension workers in a village does not guarantee that they can provide the same results because it depends on how the extension workers can provide satisfaction to farmers with the resulting performance. The purpose of this research is to produce an information system of farmer satisfaction on the performance of agricultural extension workers based on the website. The research was conducted at the Agricultural Extension Center - Department of Agriculture and Food Security, Situbondo. The research method used in this study was the Research and Development method. Data were collected by means of interviews to determine the aspects that will be raised in the questionnaire in the farmer satisfaction system. The data is then made a system design which is then implemented into a programming language to express the results of the system design. To check that the requirements are appropriate and running as desired, the system testing process is carried out. Based on the results of testing the system already includes the need for evaluation of agricultural extension workers

Assessing the Relationship among Land Transfer, Fertilizer Usage, and PM2.5 Pollution: Evidence from Rural China.

Concern for environmental issues is a crucial component in achieving the goal of sustainable development of humankind. Different countries face various challenges and difficulties in this process, which require unique solutions. This study investigated the relationship between land transfer, fertilizer usage, and PM2.5 pollution in rural China from 2000 to 2019, considering their essential roles in agricultural development and overall national welfare. A cross section dependence test, unit root test, and cointegration test, among other methods, were used to test the panel data. A Granger causality test was used to determine the causal relationship between variables, and an empirical analysis of the impulse response and variance decomposition was carried out. The results show that the use of chemical fertilizers had a significant positive impact on PM2.5 pollution, but the impact of land transfer on PM2.5 pollution was negative. In addition, land transfer can reduce the use of chemical fertilizers through economies of scale, thus reducing air pollution. More specifically, for every 1% increase in fertilizer usage, PM2.5 increased by 0.17%, and for every 1% increase in land transfer rate, PM2.5 decreased by about 0.07%. The study on the causal relationship between land transfer, fertilizer usage, and PM2.5 pollution in this paper is helpful for exploring environmental change—they are supplements and innovations which are based on previous studies and provide policy-makers with a basis and inspiration for decision-making.

Study on the heterogeneity of China’s agricultural economic growth in the context of temperature shocks

Under the background of the new development concept, compared with the absolute impacts, the relative impacts of climate change on agricultural growth deserve more attention. Based on the data from China for years 1991 and 2018, this paper uses historical fluctuations in temperature within cities to identify the heterogeneous effects on aggregate agricultural outcomes during farming and fallow periods. The results show that: first, as temperature rises reduce the economic growth rate of each agricultural sector, and the areas that are relatively vulnerable (i.e., areas where disposable income of farm households is below the sample mean) are more significantly affected by the negative impact of temperature rise; second, the impact of temperature rise on agricultural economic growth is mainly concentrated in the farming period, while the marginal damage of temperature rise is on a decreasing trend; third, the heterogeneous impact of temperature rise on agricultural economic growth during the agricultural fallow period is also not negligible. At the same time, its impact on agricultural economy is still in the primary stage, that is, its marginal damage tends to increase with the increase in temperature fluctuation. These results inform identifying the climate’s role in agricultural development and provide a theoretical and operational perspective for further optimizing the adaptive policy systems. With wide coverage of adaptive technology, we should pay more attention to the even distribution of technological dividends and continuously improve the coping ability of vulnerable groups.

Exposure Routes and Health Risks Associated with Pesticide Application.

Pesticides play an important role in agricultural development. However, pesticide application can result in both acute and chronic human toxicities, and the adverse effects of pesticides on the environment and human health remain a serious problem. There is therefore a need to discuss the application methods for pesticides, the routes of pesticide exposure, and the health risks posed by pesticide application. The health problems related to pesticide application and exposure in developing countries are of particular concern. The purpose of this paper is to provide scientific information for policymakers in order to allow the development of proper pesticide application technics and methods to minimize pesticide exposure and the adverse health effects on both applicators and communities. Studies indicate that there are four main pesticide application methods, including hydraulic spraying, backpack spraying, basal trunk spraying, and aerial spraying. Pesticide application methods are mainly selected by considering the habits of target pests, the characteristics of target sites, and the properties of pesticides. Humans are directly exposed to pesticides in occupational, agricultural, and household activities and are indirectly exposed to pesticides via environmental media, including air, water, soil, and food. Human exposure to pesticides occurs mainly through dermal, oral, and respiratory routes. People who are directly and/or indirectly exposed to pesticides may contract acute toxicity effects and chronic diseases. Although no segment of the general population is completely protected against exposure to pesticides and their potentially serious health effects, a disproportionate burden is shouldered by people in developing countries. Both deterministic and probabilistic human health risk assessments have their advantages and disadvantages and both types of methods should be comprehensively implemented in research on exposure and human health risk assessment. Equipment for appropriate pesticide application is important for application efficiency to minimize the loss of spray solution as well as reduce pesticide residuals in the environment and adverse human health effects due to over-spraying and residues. Policymakers should implement various useful measures, such as integrated pest management (IPM) laws that prohibit the use of pesticides with high risks and the development of a national implementation plan (NIP) to reduce the adverse effects of pesticides on the environment and on human health.

Artificial Intelligence-Based Drone System for Multiclass Plant Disease Detection Using an Improved Efficient Convolutional Neural Network.

The role of agricultural development is very important in the economy of a country. However, the occurrence of several plant diseases is a major hindrance to the growth rate and quality of crops. The exact determination and categorization of crop leaf diseases is a complex and time-required activity due to the occurrence of low contrast information in the input samples. Moreover, the alterations in the size, location, structure of crop diseased portion, and existence of noise and blurriness effect in the input images further complicate the classification task. To solve the problems of existing techniques, a robust drone-based deep learning approach is proposed. More specifically, we have introduced an improved EfficientNetV2-B4 with additional added dense layers at the end of the architecture. The customized EfficientNetV2-B4 calculates the deep key points and classifies them in their related classes by utilizing an end-to-end training architecture. For performance evaluation, a standard dataset, namely, the PlantVillage Kaggle along with the samples captured using a drone is used which is complicated in the aspect of varying image samples with diverse image capturing conditions. We attained the average precision, recall, and accuracy values of 99.63, 99.93, and 99.99%, respectively. The obtained results confirm the robustness of our approach in comparison to other recent techniques and also show less time complexity.

Resilience of various innovative water management practices: The case of rice production in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta floodplains

The floodplains play an important role in agricultural development and rural livelihoods in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. As an intensive rice production area of Vietnam, the floodplain has experienced significant changes in water management regime during the recent decades. Depending on specific locations and irrigation infrastructure investments, four main water management practices have been innovated, particularly a planting season of two crops per year (2C1Y), three crops per year (3C1Y), three years eight crops (3Y8C) and two years five crops (2Y5C). The 4R framework (Reform, Result, Resilience, and Return) was developed based on grounded theory approach for resilience assessment of various innovative water management practices. In terms of resilience, we found that each crop pattern involves pros and cons, and the intensive crop practices are less resilient systems, especially in social, environmental, and ecological aspects. The findings provide good lessons learned not only for Vietnam but also for the other rice-producing deltas implementing ecosystem resilience to adapt to global challenges such as flood, drought, and salinity intrusion.