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Abstarct:The primary objective of this review study was to determine the best irrigation and fertilizer scheduling practice in order to achieve maximum yield with maximum water and fertilizer use efficiency and highest nutrient uptake. It is found nutrient use efficiency could be as high as 90 per cent in fertigation as compared to 40 to 60 per cent in conventional methods. The amount of fertilizer lost through leaching can be as low as 10 per cent in fertigation whereas it is 50 per cent in the traditional system. It is observed that irrigation and fertigation scheduled at 75% ET and at 75% RDF, respectively could be a good alternate for saving water and nutrients with enhanced nutrient uptake, growth, yield and quality of crops. In this paper, the literature pertaining to the different aspects of fertigation and irrigation scheduling are reviewed.

Background: This study aims to measure the quality of life (QoL) scores in children with thalassemia major following up at a tertiary care center for routine blood transfusion in comparison to healthy children.Methods: A case control study design was adopted, wherein on the QoL of 36 children with thalassemia in the age group 5 to 18 following up for blood transfusion at Goa Medical College, was measured using PedsQL™ 4.0. This was compared to the QoL in age and gender matched healthy children from a government school. A higher score on a subscale indicates better quality of life on this instrument.Results: The children with thalassemia had lower mean scores on physical (67.85 vs 84.24; P <0.001), social (78.34 vs 87.95; P=0.002) and school (62.64 vs 79.48; P <0.001) functioning subscales compared to the healthy children. They also had lower mean psychosocial summary score (73.32 vs 82.01; P=0.003) and total health summary score (71.95 vs 82.57; P <0.001). The physical functioning subscale had significantly higher score among the children who were on chelation and also among the ones whose parents reported as being informed about the condition.Conclusions: The children with thalassemia have poor QoL in physical, social and school functioning domains. Improvement in QoL requires consolidated efforts on part of doctors, parents, school authorities and policy makers. These patients should be provided with low cost-effective chelation therapy. The parents need to be counselled about this disease by the treating team.

Salinity is a limiting factor for crop production in irrigated areas. A field experiment was conducted for two consecutive years (2017-19) using three irrigation treatments, viz. canal water (0.35 dS/m) and saline water (8 and 10 dS/m); and five fertilizer treatments, viz. control, sewage sludge (SS)-5 t/ha, SS (5 t/ha)+50% recommended dose of fertilizers (RDF), SS (5 t/ha)+75% RDF and 100% RDF, to evaluate the effect of saline water irrigation, organic and inorganic fertilization on salt ratios in pearl millet and wheat crops. However, SS was applied in the Rabi only. As the salinity of irrigation water increased, the salt ratios (Na+/K+ and Cl-/SO4 2) in pearl millet and wheat crops were increased markedly during both years. However, SS (5 t/ha) + 75% RDF recorded the lowest Na+/K+ ratio in pearl millet crop over control, but it was statistically at par with 100% RDF, while in wheat crop, the ratio was decreased considerably under 100% RDF treatment followed by sewage sludge amended treatments. Also, the ratio (Cl-/SO4 2-) in both crops was significantly decreased with sewage sludge incorporation, and the lowest was recorded with SS (5 t/ha) + 75% RDF. From the present study, it is concluded that the SS and inorganic fertilizer application helps in gaining potential of cereals against salt stress by reducing Na+ and Cl- besides increasing potassium and sulphate contents in plants.