No abstract

Soil moisture and air temperature stress are the two major abiotic factors limiting lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) growth and productivity in the humid tropics. Field experiments were conducted during winter seasons (November to March) of 2018–2019 and 2019–2020 on clay loam soil (AericHaplaquept) of Eastern India to cultivate rainfed lentil, with residual moisture. The objective was to study the effect of different time of sowing and foliar spray of micronutrients in ameliorating the effect of heat and moisture stress lentil crop experience in its reproductive stage. The study was conducted with two different dates of sowing, November and December, as main plot treatment and micronutrients foliar spray of boron, iron, and zinc either alone or in combination as subplot treatment. No foliar spray treatment was considered as a control. The soil moisture content is depleted from 38 to 18% (sowing to harvest) during November sowing; however, in December sowing, the depletion is from 30 to 15%. The foliar spray of micronutrients helped to have a better canopy cover and thus reduced soil evaporation during the later stages of crop growth when the temperature was beyond the threshold temperature of the crop. Crop growth rate (CGR) and biomass were significantly higher (p ≤ 0.05) for November sown crop and with foliar spray of boron and iron (FSB + FE) micronutrients. In the later stages of the crop when the soil moisture started depleting with no precipitation, the canopy temperature increased compared with air temperature, leading to positive values of Stress Degree Days (SDD) index. Delay in sowing reduced the duration by 11.4 days (113.5 vs. 102.1 days), resulting in varied accumulated Growing Degree Days (GDD). FSB + FE resulted in the highest yield in both years (1,436 and 1,439 kg ha−1). The results of the study concluded that the optimum time of sowing and foliar spray of micronutrients may be helpful to alleviate the soil moisture and heat stress for the sustainability of lentil production in the subtropical region.

No abstract

Jute is one of the important cash crops of in the South East Asian countries like India, Bangladesh etc. The extraction of mature jute fibre by natural microbial process known as retting. The microbes involves in retting process consume the non-fibrous cementing materials like pectin and hemicellulose. Both over and under retting reduce the fibre quality. The main problem of Jute cultivation of these areas is the retting problem due to unavailability of sufficient amount good quality of free flowing mild water during the harvesting time of the Jute due to irregularity of Monsoon rain i.e. May-June. In conventional retting process, decomposition of whole jute plant in stagnant water, so retting causes environmental pollution as well as reducing the quality of fibre. In ribbon retting, ribbons are stripped out mechanically from the stem of mature jute plants, coiled and allowed to ret under water. Ribbon retting reduces time of normal retting by 4 to 5 days. Moreover, requirement of water for ribbon retting is almost half in comparison to conventional whole plant retting under normal condition. This also reduces environmental pollution to a great extent. But use of efficient pectinolytic microbial consortium improves quality of fibre, further reduce the time of retting and the environmental pollution. There for the present study indicates the appropriate method of retting method to enhance the quality of the Jute fibre in terms of fibre strength, colour and txture for the thousands of jute growers South East Asian Countries based on the available technological resources.

Axillary buds from 5 genotypes of mulberry belonging to 4 species were cultured on modified MS basal medium. A total of 30 media combinations were tried for all the genotypes. The response of axillary buds and the requirement for growth regulators varied with genotype. In Morus indica BAP (0.25-0.5 mg/l), and in M. alba and M. rotondifolia GA3 (0.5-1.0 mg/l)were found to induce sprouting. Two genotypes of M. bombycis, namely Schimanochi and Mizusawa, developed healthy shoots on the incorporation of 2,4-D (0.5-1.0 mg/l) and BAP (0.5-2.0 mg/l), respectively. IBA (0.5 mg/l), along with cytokinin/auxin/gibberellin, had no effect on bud growth but helped root induction. Shoots developed from the axillary buds were further multiplied as nodal explants. MS basal medium supplemented with 0.5 mg/l IBA and LS vitamins was found best to produce healthy plantlets in all the genotypes. An average 89% survival was observed on transferring the plantlets to soil.

No abstract

To increase the productivity of fields growing direct-seeded upland rice, which usually gives low yields because of weed competition, unsatisfactory establishment and exposure to intermittent drought, an experiment on intercropping of rice with blackgram was conducted in two seasons under rainfed conditions on a sandy loam soil. Blackgram, when intersown simultaneously in one row in every 30 om wide space left between the stand of 10 cm apart paired rows of rice, reduced the yield of rice by 1-64 t/ha. When one row of blaokgram was intersown, 21 days after sowing of rice (after completing weeding) between the paired rows of rice, rice yield was reduced by only 0-24 t/ha compared with sole cropping of rice with weeding. This system provided mean yields of 2-48 t/ha of rice and 0-95 t/ha of blackgram. The price of blackgram being high, it showed a mean monetary advantage of Rs. 2373/ha over sole cropping of rice. The blackgram reduced the weed population appreciably. INTRODUCTIONIntercropping is an important feature of tropical agriculture. One advantage claimed for this farming system is that it gives an insurance against crop failure. In India, where intercropping is a widespread practice, many crop combinations are used and in most cases a grass and a legume are mixed. Upland direct-seeded rice crops are extensively cultivated in India but the yield of upland rice is usually low because of poor stands, adverse competition from weeds and intermittent drought. Blackgram (another important food crop extensively grown in the uplands of India) under similar condition has good growth, competes with weeds and being deep-rooted suffers less from drought.The present investigation was undertaken to Study the feasibility of intercropping upland rice with blackgram, the growth and yield of rice and blackgram grown as sole crops and as a mixture and the effects on weeds when the blackgram was established 2-3 weeks after the rice was sown or when both the crops were sown at the same time.

Morus nigra L., commonly called 'Black Mulberry' is a native of West Asia and cultivated in many countries for its edible fruits (Anonymous 1962). Its leaves are not preferred in sericulture as they are coarse and non-palatable to sikworms. But, in mulberry improvement programmes it is largely employed for breeding with other species of mulberry (Aliev 1979, Tojyo 1985. This species occupies a unique position amongst flowering plants in exhibiting decosaploidy (22x) with chromosome number 2n=308 (Janaki Ammal 1948, Seki and Oshi kane 1960), the highest number recorded for any known species. The cytological informations available in this high polyploid are fragmentary and only preliminary observations have been made on its meiosis (Tojyo 1966, Agaev andFedorova 1970). The information on breeding systems and evolution of different polyploids of the genus is highly useful in mulberry breeding programmes. In the present report, an attempt to understand the meiotic behaviour of natural decosaploid M. nigra has been made. Material and methodsMale inflorescences were collected from wild trees of Srinagar valley, Kashmir. Flower buds of appropriate stages of development were fixed in 1:3 acetic alcohol for 24 hrs and preserved in 70% ethanol. Anthers were squashed in 2% propiono-carmine. Photomicro graphs were made with temporary preparations. Pollen stainability was studied by staining the pollen grains with 2% aceto-carmine. ObservationsMeiosis proceeds normally even at this high ploidy level. The nucleus of pollen mother cells (PMCs) showed either single large nucleolus (Fig. 1) or 2-4 small nucleoli with size varia tion between them (Fig. 2). At diakinesis and metaphase I, chromosomes showed various types of associations. The small size and huge number of chromosomes in the complement offered a great handicap for critical analysis. But obviously, the bivalents were more frequent than the multivalents (Fig. 3) and frequency of univalents was very much less. Among the multivalents, no higher associations were observed thus being proportional to the ploidy of the polyploid and hexavalency was the highest. During metahase I, majority of the PMCs showed regular alignment of entire chromosome complement on the equatorial plate except a few cells with lagging of either a multivalent (Fig. 4) or 2-4 univalents. Anaphase disjunc tion appears normal, while only about 5% of cells showed laggards during early anaphasic movement (Fig. 5). Regular daughter nuclei were formed at the end of telophase I (Fig. 6).Meiosis II was also regular. All the chromosomes align perfectly at equatorial plate Present Address: 1 Karnataka State Sericulture Development Institute,