Past Issue

The Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Act of the UPA government in India was introduced primarily to enhance the livelihood of households by providing 100 days of employment in development works. An analyze of the data for Ottapidaram block of Thoothukudi district has revealed that the scheme was able to provide only 26 days of employment in a year on average. Moreover the average earnings by each person did not exceed Rs.2000 per year.

Indian economy is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. The agriculture sector is the back bone of Indian economy as it accounts for about fifty eight percent of the employment in the nation (2001 census). India is the third largest producer of coconut and leads ninety coconut producing countries of the world. The New Agriculture Policy (NAP) which promotes the Rainbow revolution has a feature of promoting private investments in agriculture as one of its special feature. The LPG era has created electricity to become inseparable with the agriculture.

Gajah Mungkur reservoir is a multipurpose reservoir with broadness of 8,800 ha . Its functions mainly for irrigation, hydroelectric power, source of drinking water, tourism, aquaculture and fisheries. Presently the sustainability of reservoir function is distressed by emerging of sedimentation. The sedimentation may be reduced water volme, create siltation, decrease carrying capacity, create rust and corrosion on the turbine engine. The aims of the research is to observe the sedimentation rate at Gajah Mungkur Reservoir as a base line study on the reservoir management model.

The variance due to SCA was higher than that of the variance due to GCA for all the six characters of interest. The variance due to dominance was much pronounced than that of additive genetic variance for all the characters studied. The study revealed the importance of both dominance and epistasis for evolving genotypes with higher fruit yield. It may be achieved by resorting to population improvement programme.

Pesticides have been used in agriculture to enhance food production by eradicating unwanted insects and controlling disease vectors. Among common pesticides, organophosphorus compounds are widely used in agriculture, medicine and industry. Excessive application of pesticides from agricultural fields contaminate aquatic medium, resulting in serious damage to non-target species, including fish. The changes in enzymatic system may alter the metabolic processes. More recently changes in enzymes concentrations are being employed in the evaluation of toxicological responses.

A field experiment was conducted during rice fallow season 2012 under deep clay soil at experimental farm, Faculty of Agriculture, Annamalai University, Tamil Nadu to study the effect of foliar nutrition on growth, yield attributes and yield of rice fallow blackgram. The experiment was conducted in randomized block design and replicated thrice. The experiment comprised of nine treatments viz., control, seed soaking with different liquid organic manures alone and along with foliar application of jeevamrutha, panchagavya, vermiwash and cow urine.

Caste is the most meaningful way of classification of Indian population. The family background across the social groups defined by caste is sharply different. The reason behind this disparity is that this way of classification of the society was initially introduced on the basis of occupation. The members of the so called disadvantaged social groups were concentrated at the bottom of occupational hierarchy and the contrary is true for the members of the advantaged social groups. Till this date this type of deprivation is not totally disappeared.

In this study the effect of cyanobacteria as a biofertilizer on growth and yield attributes of rice (ADT38) were evaluated. The experiments were designed with three replications. The growth parameters such as shoot and root length and yield attributes of rice like plant height, number of tillers, number of panicle and   grain weight  were observed. The present results suggest that the application of cyanobacteria enhances growth and yield attributes of rice when compared to control.

The standard soil invertebrate toxicity tests developed by OECD (Organization of Economical Cooperation and Development) and ISO (International Organization of Standardization) use an artificial soil as the test substrate, which contains sphagnum peat as a component. This type of peat is not widely available in tropical country like India. Investigation of possible alternative substrates using locally available materials therefore is vital for performing such ecotoxicity tests, particularly in the tropics.

Now-a-days computers are put to various applications in Science, Commerce, Technology, etc. Relatively, computers in teaching are in its infancy. However, the computer is bringing some exciting innovations to education.