Journal of Applied and Natural Science
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Emamectin benzoate: Potential larvicide and antifeedant agent against cotton Boll worm Helicoverpa armigera (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae)
Get PDFHelicoverpa armigera, a global polyphagous pest, attacks a wide variety of crops causing huge agricultural loss. Overuse of conventional insecticides for Helicoverpa control has made Helicoverpa resistant to insecticides leading to more severe attacks on crops diverting interest of researchers to explore alternate control agents. Present study investigates the cidal and antifeedant potential of Emamectin benzoate; a semi-synthetic avermectin derived from the soil actinomycetes, Streptomyces avermitilis; against early IV instars of H. armigera. Larvae were fed on the castor leaf discs (3.5 cm diameter) dipped in different concentrations of Emamectin benzoate; ranging from 0.05 µg/mL-1.5 µg/mL. The leaf disc areas were measured pre-and post-larval feeding to estimate the antifeedant potential of compound. The effect of feeding was also assessed on the survival of larvae by scoring the larval mortality till 96 h. Our investigations showed significant larvicidal potential of Emamectin benzoate against H. armigera revealing respective LC50 values of 0.26 µg/mL, 0.095 µg/mL, 0.043 µg/mL and 0.027 µg/mL after 24, 48, 72 and 96 h feeding. Furthermore, a remarkable decrease of 93.59% was observed in larval feeding potential indicating significant antifeedant efficacy of Emamectin benzoate. A strong correlation between antifeedant index and the Emamectin benzoate concentration resulted in 1.48-fold index reduction with a decrease in concentration. Our results demonstrated efficacy of Emamectin benzoate as an effectual larvicidal and antifeedant agent against H. armigera. Employing selective insecticide can tackle issues of pest resistance and pest resurgence after ascertaining in the fields as Helicoverpa control agent and negating impact on non-target organisms. 
Investigation of water quality changes in drinking water supplied from Sitlee water treatment plant on River Tawi to Old Jammu City, Jammu, J&K, India
Get PDFIn the present study, an attempt has been made to evaluate the water quality changes in River Tawi water treated at Sitlee water treatment plant, and supplied for drinking to Old Jammu City, Jammu, J&K, India. Water samples from the treated water unit of Sitlee water treatment plant and around ten houses from the distribution point (Old Jammu City) were analyzed monthly for various physicochemical parameters for a period of one year (February 2014 to January 2015). The study indicated deterioration of drinking water quality during its passage through the distribution network which has been attributed to the leakages and defects in the old pipe system supplying water to the Jammu city. Comparison of analyzed water quality parameters with the drinking water standards prescribed by World Health Organization (WHO) and Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) indicated that parameters like DO (7.49-8.24mg/l), calcium(49.93-67.08mg/l), magnesium(16.14-25.21mg/l) and potassium(6.99-7.93mg/l) were almost nearing the desirable limits but were within the permissible limits and parameters like turbidity(3.5-8.17 NTU) and total hardness(78.87-120.50mg/l) were above the desirable limits in the water samples collected from the distribution point. The collected primary data for the thirteen water quality parameters has been used to calculate the Arithmetic Water Quality Index(WQI) which has shown monsoon increase with higher values at distribution point(65.65). One time microbial analysis (MPN/100ml) for total and faecal coliform has indicated presence of faecal coliform (<1/100ml) in water samples from eight households at distribution point which indicates contamination of water with human faecal matter during its passage through the distribution network. According to microbial standards laid down by Central Pollution Control Board (2008), water contaminated with faecal coliform is unfit for drinking without conventional treatment
Changes in behavioural and locomotory activities of freshwater fish, Cirrhinus mrigala (Hamilton) in response to sublethal exposure of Chlorpyrifos
Get PDFThe aim of the present study was to analyze the impact of sub-lethal toxicity of chlorpyrifos, one of the largest market selling agrochemical on physiological parameters of teleost fish, Cirrhinus mrigala addressing the possible causative involvement in behavioural and locomotion responses. Primarily, the acute toxicity (96h LC50) test was carried out and the value calculated by probit analysis was found to be 0.44 mg L-1. Further, one-fifth, one-tenth and one-twentieth of 96 h LC50 were selected as sublethal concentrations for sub acute studies. The experiment was carried out for 21 days and the alternative behaviour was recorded in terms of Air Ingulping (AI), Operculum Beat Frequency (OBF), Surfacing Movement (SM), Vertical Hanging (VH) and Tail Beat Frequency (TBF) on duration day 2, 4, 7, 14 and 21. Significant effect of both the concentrations and duration was observed in fishes treated with selected doses of chlorpyrifos. It was found that AI, OBF, SM, VH, TBF was highest on day 7 at 0.08 mg L-1 concentration of Chlorpyrifos. The findings revealed that there is a need to control the use of chlorpyrifos because of its toxicity. All the fish avoidance tests proved to be an important predictive and sensitive biomarker in aquatic monitoring and pollution management
Evaluation of socio-economic status of the skilled and unskilled workers of an organic farm of Himachal Pradesh, India- A case study
Get PDFIn this study, an attempt was made to study the socio-economic status of the workers engaged in organic farming. The various healthy practices under organic farming like compost production, use of bio-pesticides, crop rotations, etc. increases soil health and quality of the food. The organic practices including Homa bhasm, Agnihotra and Biodynamic farming besides promoting healthy agriculture are expected to have seeming effects on behavioral aspects of the farm workers. However, apparently systemic information on social attributes of organic farm is still limited. The socio- economic aspects of an organic farm CSKHPKV, Palampur were documented through structured questionnaires. The data was analyzed by the use of indices, ratios and percentages. The various aspects as family structure and size, age distribution, caste structure, literacy level, occupational pattern, economic status behavioral aspects were evaluated. The skilled workers had nuclear family while unskilled workers had joint families, larger portion of workers in the organic farm belonged to younger age group (31 years), literacy index was high (4.32) in case of skilled workers while low (3.23) for unskilled workers. It was observed that in case of skilled workers majority of individuals were positively affected through increased farming knowledge, better wage rate, improved ethical and spiritual thinking while in case of unskilled workers no obvious positive reaction was observed for farming knowledge and wage rate though there was perceptible change in punctuality and spiritual thinking.
 
Extraction and processing of Bast fibres from Ficus glomerata- A new source for non- conventional fibres
Get PDFThe increasing global preference towards the natural products rather than synthetic products has increased the attraction of tourists to the local markets. Ficus glomerata fibres is one of the suitable source as raw material for making natural products like carrier bags, baskets, belts and some handicraft items. Fibres from F. glomerata stems were extracted by using water retting method. After retting, the fibres were scoured using sodium hydroxide (NaOH) for making them suitable to form the different produucts from the processed fibres such as yarn, nonwoven, woven and knitted fabrics. Scouring conditions such as chemical concentration and processing time were evaluated on the basis of physical properties of fibres such as tenacity, elongation and fineness. The optimization results obtained from testing of physical properties of fibres shows that, the 3% concentration of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and 60 minutes processing time was found promising for the treatment of fibres. The improvement in F. glomerata fibres through proper processing can yield value added fibres and thus can enhance the potential utility of these fibres in diversified sectors. So, the F. glomaerata fibres has a potential to provide an important role in making space for natural fibre products in the outside market
Mapping and classification of crops using high resolution satellite image
Get PDFIn the present study an attempt was made to perform land use land cover classification at Level-III in order to discriminate and map individual crops. IRS Resources at 2 LISS IV sensor imagery (5.0 m spatial resolution) of September 2014 was utilized for the study. A hybrid classification approach of unsupervised classification followed by supervised classification was adopted to identify and map the crop area in Kodumudi block, Erode district of Tamil Nadu. Signature evaluation was carried out to study the class separability and through cross tabulation and the accuracy was assessed by error matrix. The signature separability analysis to classify various land cover classes indicated that the class viz., waterbody, settlement, sandy area and fallow land were better and for vegetation sub-classes viz., individual crops were poor, which means classification of individual crops was a challenge. The overall accuracy with three different algorithms varied from 56 to 65 per cent and this low accuracy was due to the problem in discriminating the tonal variation and spectral pattern of individual crops in the study area. Thus, classification of vegetation categories into individual crops using LISS IV data resulted in moderate classification accuracy in areas with multiple cropping
Effect of pre-sowing treatments and growing media on seed germination and seedling growth of Albizia lebbeck (L.) Benth
Get PDFThe seeds of Albizia lebbeck have been observed to exhibit physical dormancy due to presence of hard seed-coat. To overcome this problem, the seeds were subjected to seven pre-sowing treatments viz., T1-immersion of seeds in cold water for 12 h; T2-immersion of seeds in cold water for 24 h; T3-immersion of seeds in hot water (100 °C) and subsequent cooling at room temperature for 12 h; T4-immersion of seeds in hot water (100 °C) and subsequent cooling at room temperature for 24 h; T5-immersion of seeds in cold water for 12 h followed by immersion in hot water (100 °C) and allowed to cool for 1 h; T6-immersion of seeds in cold water for 24 h followed by immersion in hot water (100 °C) and allowed to cool for 1 h. Untreated seeds served as control (T0). Treatment T3 gave highest germination (96%) which was comparable with T5 (95 %), T4 (94 %) and T6 (93%). Nine growing media viz., T1: soil, T2: soil+sand (2:1), T3: soil+perlite (2:1), T4: soil+Farm Yard Manure (FYM) (2:1), T5: soil+vermicompost (2:1), T6: soil+sand+FYM (1:1:1), T7: soil+sand+vermicompost (1:1:1), T8: soil+perlite+FYM (1:1:1) and T9: soil+perlite+ vermicompost (1:1:1) were, also, studied for their effect on seedling growth of A. lebbeck. Among these media, maximum values of shoot length (23.82 cm), root length (21.14 cm), collar diameter (3.59 mm) and seedling quality index (0.350) were observed in T7
The Bionomics of predatory butterfly, apefly (Spalgis epius) (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) on mealybug, Paracoccus marginatus (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) in cocoa
No full textApefly, Spalgis epius (Westwood) (Lepidoptera: Lycaenidae) is a small aphytophagous butterfly and their larvae feeds on the insects of Pseudococcidae, Hemiptera. In the present study, development of immature stages and life cycle of this predatory butterfly was observed on mealybugs, Paracoccus marginatus (Williams and Granara de Willink) (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) in cocoa under the laboratory conditions. The morphometry results indicated that the diameter of the egg was 0.52 ± 0.06 mm and the they were collected and kept in the laboratory at 25-30°C and 40-80% Relative Humidity. The eggs were greenish blue in colour and disk shaped, sculptured and both the top and bottom compacted with micropylar despair in the top and hatched in 4.16 ± 0.29 days. It undergoes four larval instars and the total larval period lasts 13.1 ± 0.12 days. The upper surface of the larval body was fully developed with wax coating. The duration of the pre pupal stage was 3.00 ± 0.17 days. The mold on the hard dorsal side of the pupa resembled on the face of a monkey structure. The prepupal larva shrunk and turned toward dull black colour of the surface of body. The pupal period was recorded as 10.00 ± 0.04 days. The total duration from egg to adult emergence was noticed as 30.30 ± 0.33 days. In adults, the patch is bigger in females than that in the males. The knowledge of development and life cycle of S. epius on factitious/natural hosts on various crops is advantageous to develop and standardize the mass culturing techniques for exploration of this potential species for predation of mealybugs. 
Allelopathic effect of Celtis australis on germination and growth parameters of some important food crops of the Garhwal Himalayas
Get PDFPresent study was conducted to assess the allelopathic effect of leaf and bark aqueous extracts of Celtis australis on Triticum aestivum, Hordeum vulgare, Brassica rapa, Lens culinaris and Vigna umbellate under In-vitro condition. Different leaf and bark aqueous extracts 5%, 10%, and 15% were used to irrigate the seeds of test crops. The results revealed that the concentration dependent significant (p=0.05) inhibitory effect of aqueous leaf and bark extracts on germination, root and shoot length of all the test crops. Among all the test crops Triticum aestivum was found most sensitive where the germination percentage was reduced down to 46.0% by the leaf extract (15%) as compared to control (82.3%), while the maximum inhibition in the root length of Lens culinaris (0.5 cm) by 10% leaf extract was observed as compare to control (8.2 cm). In shoot length maximum inhibitory effect was observed in Hordeum vulgare (3.5 cm) as compared to control (13.3 cm). Similarly, the bark extract showed the maximum inhibition in germination percentage of Lens culinaris (41.6%) at 15% concentration as compare to control (70.0%) while the maximum inhibition for the root length was recorded in Triticum aestivum (1.9 cm) at 15% concentration as compare to control (17.3 cm). In shoot length maximum inhibition was observed for Triticum aestivum (1.3 cm) at 10% extract level as compare to control (13.4 cm), while Vigna umbellate (5.5 cm) at 15% concentration showed stimulatory effect as compare to control (3.4 cm) exceptionally. Finally, it is concluded that Vigna umbellate exhibited the maximum tolerance against leaf and bark aqueous and might be a better option for intercropping with C. australis. However, the allelopathic effect on the other test crops can be minimized by removing the fallen leaves from the agricultural fields
A study on sanitation, hygiene practices and food safety knowledge among food vendors in different sectors of Chandigarh, India
Get PDFThe present study were carried out to assess the hygiene practices and food safety among street food vendors in the city of Chandigarh. It includes 100 samples of vendors. Fifty vendors were mobile and other 50 was fixed vendors. A self planned questionnaire was used for data collection for the vendors. The questionnaire included questions about demographic information, hygiene practices and food safety. Thirty eight percent of vendors used stalls, but did not uphold their stalls well. Eighty-three per cent of the vendors had thrown garbage in the open vessel and 14.0% used dustbin for dispose garbage. Personal hygiene was also observed which indicated that the vendors never wear the head covers, handled food with bare hand and they did not wear overcoats/aprons as well. Street food vendors were not aware of hygienic and sanitary practice