It is an important trait in plant growth-promoting bacteria the ability to solubilize and mineralize insoluble inorganic phosphate compounds, making the element available for plants. High populations of phosphate solubilizing bacteria (PSB) will increases the P uptake by plants and reduce the application of organic fertilizers. In this study, a total of 14 PSB isolates from rhizosphere of maize, cotton, ragi, rice, turmeric, sugarcane, cowpea and green gram were tested for the mineral phosphate solubilizing (MPS) activities in Hydroxy Apatite (HAP) broth by analyzing the soluble-P content after 72 h of incubation at 30oC. The ‘P’ solubilising ability of SGN 1 was found to be 35.56 mg/100ml isolated from sugarcane rhizosphere soil. SGN 1 which was showing higher phosphate solubilizing ability in HAP broth was selected for molecular characterization with amplifying and sequencing of 1.3 kb 16S rRNA gene. Based on the BLASTn homology it was found that PSB sugarcane isolate SGN1 having 95% identity with showed 99% homology with Burkholderia thailandensis.
A pot culture experiment was conducted to assess the relative performance of fertilizer composites developed using conventional fertilizers and zeolite based nano formulations in the recommended proportions of N, P, K, S, Zn, B and Mo using greengram as test crop. The plants were fertilized with 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100 % of the conventional or nano-fertilizer formulations. Before fortification the Zeolite were subjected to size reduction and modified by using hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide, a cationic surfactant, to modify its surface to increase its capacity to retain anions. During the experiment soil samples were collected and assessed for its nutrient status besides biochemical properties and microbial population. The result shows that the physical and chemical properties of conventional fertilizer applied and nano-fertilizer formulation applied soils were significantly differs in terms of bulk density, particle density, porosity, pH, EC and CEC. The biochemical properties such as water soluble carbon and biomass carbon then biological properties like microbial populations in soils are measured in end of the experiment shows the significant response to added conventional or nano-fertilizer. Pot culture study also confirms that the soil available nutrients responded well for nano-zeolite. Higher biological activities in nano-fertilizer fertilized soil reached within 25 or 50% of the nanofertilizer in comparison to conventional fertilizer.
Rice is the most important food crop after wheat and maize. India, the home of rice, has nearly one third of the world’s rice acreage but still suffers from a chronic shortage of the cereal. The knowledge of genetic variability in a given crop species for characters under improvement is important in any plant breeding programme. Heritability with genetic advances is more helpful in predicting the gain under effective selection. Genetic parameters for yield and its correspondent characters in rice were estimated from a trial with 36 rice hybrids evaluated for eighteen characters related to yield. Analysis of variance revealed high significant differences for all the 18 characters studied. Phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) was higher than genotype coefficient of variation (GCV) for all the characters indicating the little influence of environment on the characters. All the qualitative characters depicted high estimates of heritability, which indicates preponderance of additive gene action in the inheritance of these characters. High to moderate degree of genetic advance was observed for number of filled grains per panicle followed by biological yield per plant. Therefore, the results suggest that these characters can be used for grain yield selection.
The effect of drying methods and pre-treatments on the quality of dried Byadagi chilli (Capsicum annuum Linn.) were investigated. The temperature of open yard sun drying around 37°C and solar tunnel drying around 60°C was used. The quality parameters viz., moisture content, colour (L*, a*, b* values), ascorbic acid content, capsaicin content, titrable acidity and aflatoxin content. The solar tunnel-dried (STD) sample gave more bright-red colour and contained higher ascorbic acid content than the open yard sun-dried (OYSD) samples (P<0.05). The aflatoxin content was monitored using Enzyme Linked Immuno Sorbent Assay (ELISA). The Byadagi chilli dried in solar tunnel dryer showed less aflatoxin content than open yard sun drying. In addition, the unique visible attributes in the STD and OYSD samples were bright and dull, respectively.
A study was undertaken to study the effect of weather parameters on yield cocoa over Vellanikkara, Thrissur, Kerala. The monthly cocoa yield of the Cadbury – KAU Co-operative Research Project farm were collected for 100 trees from 1991-2007. The weather data for the above period was also collected and pooled according to the cocoa yield data. The mean peak harvest was noticed during May (6.2 pods/tree), followed by March (5.2 pods/tree) while less in February (2.7 pods/tree). The coefficient of variation was very high (48.7 – 124.5 %) in monthly pod yield of cocoa while it was less (23.2 %) in the case of annual yield of cocoa. The mean seasonal pod yield was more during the summer (5.0 pods/tree), followed by Northeast monsoon season (4.1 pods/tree). The results indicated that there was an inverse trend between the annual rainfall and cocoa yield. Wherever the annual rainfall was very high, the annual cocoa yield was low. In the case of temperature, the maximum temperature from January to March had a profound negative influence on annual cocoa yield. From the above it can be inferred that high maximum temperature from January to middle of March together with high rainfall during the rainy season appeared to be detrimental for obtaining better yield in cocoa.
