Analysing the trend of land use/land cover change and its cause and consequence on human livelihoods as well as on the environment is a matter of concern for sustainable development and management of natural resource. Retrospective analysis of land use/land cover dynamics and its driving force has been undertaken using satellite images of Landsat5 TM 1984, Landsat5 TM 1999, and Landsat8 TM 2015 with 30 m spacial resolution for Beressa watershed of Ethiopia. ArcGIS10.2.2 and ERDAS Imagine14 have been used for image processing to produce 6 land uses/land cover classes in the study area. The result of classified image indicated that in the last 3 decades, farm land and settlement area increased @ 71.6 ha/year and 16.8 ha/year respectively. Between 1984 and 1999, forest cover and water body decreased @ 5 ha/year and 0.03 ha/ year respectively but increased @15.6 ha/year and 7.1 ha/ year between 1999 and 2015 respectively. This increase could be possible due to the involvement of local communities to plant trees around their homestead and farm lands. In this program, plantation of indigenous tree species other than eucalyptus (which affect the ecology) was encouraged. The % share of grazing land and barren land has been decreased to 10 and 10.1 % respectively during 1999 that further reduced to 6.1 and 5.2 % during 2015 as against the 12.4 and 13.1 % during 1984 respectively in the Beressa watershed. Rapid population growth demanded more land for cultivation, more trees for domestic fuelwood consumption and more area for settlement had been responsible for drastic change in the land use/land cover change in the last 3 decades in the Beressa watershed. In order to check the loss of area from gazing land and barren land, alternative source income opportunities to the community dwellers may be provided. Therefore, environmental conservation, management and rehabilitation require integrated approach of community development at various levels.

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Watershed is not only a hydrological unit for hydrologist but also a socio-political-ecological entity for rural community. Ethiopian highlands hailing as the cradle of humanity and home to about 80% of the population helped shelter from foreign conquest and making a strong base of rural community. The area is threatened with erosion and loss of agricultural productivity. The soil and water conservation program initiated in 1970 achieved only limited success due to its failure in addressing to the problems of local people. The prominent reasons assigned were lack of community participation, ignoring indigenous knowledge, adopting top down approach and poor institutional collaboration. The present government taking lessons from the past, started community based integrated watershed management program removing all the shortcomings through the instrument of new policies for improved livelihood and living conditions of rural communities.

Cauliflower is an important vegetable crop which belongs to the family Brassicaceae and is grown in many countries like India, China, Italy, Europe, America, etc. It is grown for its highly suppressed 'prefloral fleshy apical meristem' branches called "curd." It is a cross-pollinated crop. There are different groups based on their characteristics. Multiple pollination mechanisms, e.g., self-incompatibility and male sterility, not only encourages cross-pollination but also found useful in the commercial hybrid seed production of the crop. As the main hindrance to the popularization of F 1 hybrids is unavailability and high cost of hybrid seed. In cauliflower, F 1 hybrids have been found advantageous for earliness, high early and total yield, better curd quality with respect to compactness and color, uniform maturity, resistance to insect pest, diseases and unfavorable weather conditions.

Cluster bean, or guar, [Cyamopsis tetragonoloba (L.) Taub] is an important industrial crop. At present there are no marker resources or linkage maps available for this crop. Development of molecular markers is essential for accelerating genetic studies and breeding in guar. In the present study, mining of simple sequence repeat (SSR) sequences from 16,476 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) of guar was done using the microsatellite (MISA) identification tool. A total of 907 SSR‐containing sequences were identified. Flanking primers were designed for SSR‐containing sequences. Primers were selected on the basis of Tm, guanine‐cytosine (GC) content, and product length. A total of 362 pairs of primers were designed, out of which 224 were synthesized and used for assessment of amplification and polymorphism in five accessions of three Cyamopsis species. Out of 224 primer pairs, 187, 184, and 121 resulted in the amplification of SSR‐containing sequences producing reliable and reproducible DNA bands in C. tetragonoloba, C. serrata, and C. senegalensis, respectively. The analysis of the DNA bands revealed that 44 SSR markers were monomorphic in all the five accessions. Four SSR markers showed polymorphism in all three tested varieties of C. tetragonoloba. Our study gives the preliminary information on types, distribution, and frequencies of various SSRs present in the EST database of guar. The results provide the first set of 187 SSR markers for the guar research community.