This paper has studied the impact of crop diversification on dietary diversity of households in different regions of Tamil Nadu. Two different types of data set were used: (1) National Sample Survey Organization's (NSSO) consumer expenditure survey data for the years TE 2004-05 and TE 2012-13, and (2) Cropping pattern data from Season and Crop report for the years TE 2004 and TE 2012-13. Multiple linear regression model was used to study the linkages between crop and dietary diversification. The study has revealed that dietary diversification of Cauvery delta zone, Northern zone and Northeastern zone was parallel with crop diversification. The crop diversification influenced positively the dietary diversification, whereas vegetable diversification was negatively related with diet diversification, irrespective of income groups in the state. Also, larger household size, presence of own land, older age and higher education level of household-head have been found positively related with dietary diversity of households in Tamil Nadu. The current nutrients intake pattern has been found about 50 per cent of the RDA, particularly of crude fibre and iron and about two-thirds in case of energy and vitamin A. The nutrient intake gap is further widened in low-income non-farm groups. Appropriate nutritional security programmes maybe initiated particularly covering children, pregnant women and aged people.

The world of uncertainty motivates the study of stochastic perturbation in the mathematical models of real life. The main objective of this paper is to study stochastic sex-structured HIV/AIDS epidemic model with effect of screening of infectives. We have shown that the proposed stochastic epidemic model with boundedness and permanence has a unique global positive solution. The selection of suitable Lyapunov functions provides sufficient conditions for investigating persistence and extinction of disease. Based on numerical experiments, the theoretical findings of this paper have been verified.

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Exporters choose to export, for the foreign market through exporters participating in the foreign markets directly and also positively react to price signals in the domestic markets explicitly. When there is an increasing demand for commodities in the world market, exporter would receive higher prices. The specific objective of the study is; to identify factors affecting the export participation and performance of agricultural commodities exporters of Tamil Nadu. The results clearly indicated that among the independent variables, foreign market price and distribution of commodities by the ith firm have significantly and positively influenced the State level of export participation of the exporters. On the contrary, domestic market price, the quantity produced for the domestic market, quantity produced for the foreign market and the cost of export commodities have influenced the export participation negatively. The firms would produce positive quantities for the domestic market, but, in practice, some firms would produce for zero exports. Significant and negative nonlinear results were also found for Domestic market price, Quantity produced for the domestic market, Quantity produced for the foreign market and the cost of export commodities in this study.

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This paper assesses the farm-level impacts of rice blast on yield, cost and returns and resource use efficiency in paddy cultivation employing the Bayesian approach. The result shows about 27% less yield and 19% higher cost on the disease affected farms compared to that on unaffected farms, causing a difference of 80% in the net returns. The analysis of resource use efficiency shows a positive impact of plant protection measures on both disease affected as well as unaffected farms. In general, other inputs appear to be sub-optimally utilized.

Turmeric is the major spice crop in India. This paper attempts to estimate the cost and economic returns of turmeric cultivation among various size categories (marginal, small, semi medium, medium and large), of farmers in Erode district of Tamil Nadu, which is one of the major turmeric growing region in India. The results of the study showed that of all the size categories, the economic returns realized by large farmers were comparatively higher..Besides ensuring reasonable price to the farmers, the study suggested for value addition, like boiling, drying and grading of rhizomes in order to achieve maximum returns in turmeric cultivation.