Genetics of Inter Cropping for Crop Productivity Enhancement

Inter cropping which is also known as mixed cropping has ability of increasing usage of nutrient and water efficiently, enhancing crop productivity, and plasticity to abiotic and biotic stress resulted by change in climate. In this agroecological farming method, two or more crops are cultivated together on the same farm area. Cereal with legume is a common combination. Crop selection is not profitable unless characteristics useful in intercrops, such as intercropping in legume and cereal cultivars, are considered. Inter cropping can result in enhanced soil fertility and structure, improved weed suppression, the conservation of soil moisture, and comparatively better control of diseases and pests, resulting greater yield and increased profitability. The biggest benefit of intercropping systems is the fact that they combine above-ground and below-ground benefits: these benefits include both short and tall plant components, which helps them to harness sunlight for photosynthesis, as well as deep and shallow rooted plant components, which assists them in using water and nutrients for crop production. Intercropping is popular in areas of the world including China, Mali, Indonesia, India, Ethiopia, and Niger due to its high growing popularity in agriculture. General & Specific Combining Ability principles in hybrid breeding have been applied for crop combinations and cultivars, and their impacts are recognized as General/ Specific Mixing Ability. The other considerable advantages of intercropping include greater land use efficiency, competitive ability towards weed, favorable exudates from the component legumes, and greater yield stability which cannot be achieved in monocropping. Plant breeding enables intercropping systems to better use their genetic diversity by conducting plant breeding research and harnessing this variability to cross-crop adaptability. High labor inputs in harvesting, higher cost of maintenance and reduction of the main crop are some disadvantages of intercropping.

Evaluating the economic efficiency of investment project for the technological process digitalization of light industry enterprises

Subject. The article considers the development of an algorithm for evaluating the effectiveness of an investment project for the digitalization of light industry enterprises from the perspective of various stakeholders. Objectives. The aim is to evaluate the economic efficiency of an investment project for the digitalization of the technological process of light industry companies from the position of various stakeholders. Methods. We employ the comparative analysis, statistical analysis, the net present value method, the investment analysis, and sensitivity analysis. Results. We review an investment project for digitalization of the technological process of a light industry company, determine the effects that will be obtained during the implementation of the investment project, provide calculations of these effects, and define changes in the labor and material costs of companies. Conclusions. The implementation of an investment project of light industry enterprises will affect two categories of costs: labor and material. The introduction of the technology will reduce time losses in the total amount of labor inputs of one item manufacture, therefore, the production staff will have free time to produce additional items. Material costs will be increased due to the introduction of RFID tags for each unit of products and materials for additional production. The maximum possible reduction of time losses is 50%, taking into account the capacity of OOO Sportego. The implementation of the investment project will be effective in case of reducing losses by at least 15% and not more than 50%.

A New Grafting Method for Watermelon to Inhibit Rootstock Regrowth and Enhance Scion Growth

Grafting is a widely used technique in watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) production. However, cost of grafted seedlings is generally high as a result of intensive labor inputs for propagation using traditional grafting methods such as the manual removal of rootstock regrowth. This study developed a new grafting tool to physically remove the epidermis of pumpkin (C. maxima × C. moschata) and bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) rootstock cotyledon base during grafting; we called this a new grafting method. Compared with the traditional grafting, the new grafting method significantly decreased the pumpkin rootstock regrowth rate from 100% to 8% in hole insertion and 2% in one cotyledon grafting, respectively. These attenuated rates for bottle gourd rootstock regrowth were 23% and 9% in hole insertion and one cotyledon grafting, respectively. The scion dry weights of new hole insertion and one cotyledon grafting were increased by 78% and 74% when pumpkin was used as rootstock as compared with traditional grafting without regrown rootstock removal, while the respective values were 33% and 17% in bottle gourd rootstock grafted plants. In addition, the time used for the new hole insertion grafting method to physically remove the epidermis of pumpkin rootstock cotyledon base was significantly shorter than the time required to remove the rootstock regrowth manually three times in the traditional grafting (4.2 s/plant vs. 9.3 s/plant). Similar results were also observed in the new one cotyledon grafting (4.2 s/plant vs. 8.8 s/plant). Taken together, this study presents a new method in watermelon grafting to reduce rootstock regrowth, therefore benefiting both scion growth and plant management, thus the development of this new method is clearly useful in watermelon production.

A New Method for Measuring Total Factor Productivity Growth Based on the Full Industry Equilibrium Approach: The Case of the Greek Economy

A new method of identifying the sources of output growth and measuring total factor productivity (TFP) is proposed, with an application to data from the Greek economy. The price accounting approach, based on the full industry equilibrium (FIE) framework introduced by Opocher and Steedman, where technical progress not only increases outputs relative to inputs but also reduces output prices relative to input rewards, is used. The contributions of this paper are that, first, it amends the FIE TFP measurement approach to account for heterogeneous labor inputs, imported inputs, and indirect taxes, and applies the method to real-world data from the Greek economy; second, it provides a comparison of the results with those found by the use of the neoclassical approach to TFP measurement arguing that the FIE approach measures better sectoral TFP change, and third, it provides an estimate of the effects of sectoral research and development (R&D) expenditures and R&D diffusion from other sectors on TFP change for the Greek economy.

Vision-Based Path Guidance to Achieve Dies-Free Roller Hemming Process

Due to its high production flexibility, roller hemming has become the mainstream process for forming and joining metal sheets in the automotive industry. The traditional roller hemming process requires specific dies to support sheet metal parts and repeated offline manual adjustment of hemming routes, resulting in high die costs, high time consumption, and excessive labor inputs. The universal platform presented in this paper could replace specific dies to effectively reduce costs and expand production flexibility. To reach this objective, a vision-based automatic compensation path to achieve a dies-free roller hemming process is proposed and investigated in this paper. Hand–eye sensor modules assisted by multi-coordinate synchronization calibration for the roller hemming were designed to reconstruct three-dimensional (3-D) shape data of the incoming materials. Results from the proposed system were validated with experimental measurements for the sheet offset and the compensation of the arm hemming position, showing that the single-axis error can be reduced to ≤0.1 mm.

REVIEW OF SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE AND NORMATIVE LEGAL DOCUMENTATION FOR ORGANIZATION OF AND PAYMENT FOR DENTAL CARE

The article presents a review of scientific domestic and foreign literature and regulatory legal documentation, which allowed to identify problems in the organization of and payment for dental care and to determine possible directions of scientific research on the stated topic. Dependence of availability of specialized dental care on the income level, limited availability and late medical assistance in the rural regions, measures to increase availability through use of the programs of preferential prosthetics are shown. The problems of low coverage of dental services by mandatory medical insurance programs are considered. The levels of provision of population of RF with medical care, methods and difficulties of payments to specialists, of use of conventional units of labor inputs, of correction factors for children and adults, the issues of standardization of primary dental care, ambiguous attitude to the classifier of basic medical dental procedures and technologies that changed the established principle of remuneration in dental practice, are described. The method of payment for primary dental care provided on an outpatient basis for a completed case of treatment in terms of cost of clinic-statistical groups, as well as the per capita principle of payment for outpatient dental care and the difficulties with its implementation within compulsory health insurance in most regions are considered. An important role of automation of the working place for filling the medical documents, of improvement of organizational and medical technologies with use of new materials and equipment, is indicated. Analysis of the scope of medical care demanded by the population within the programs of the state guarantees is given. An emphasis is placed on the priority of the development of the modern dentistry as governmental-private partnership in terms of high adaptation to the market conditions. A complex character of issues of prophylaxis, screening, improvement of organization of and payment for dental care is emphasized, salvation of which will permit to considerably improve the quality of medical care and to guarantee its availability.

Crop Management Practices and Labor Inputs for Hop Production in Florida

The booming craft beer industry, rising prices of hops, and demand for locally-produced ingredients have recently increased interest in local hop production among growers and brewers. This article describes crop management practices and labor inputs required for small-scale hop production in Florida, with the aim of assisting growers with investment and farm management decisions. It is part of a larger series that will review the challenges of hop production in Florida, based on research experience at the UF/IFAS Gulf Coast Research and Education Center in Balm, FL. This new 6-page publication of the UF/IFAS Horticultural Sciences Department was written by Shinsuke Agehara, Mariel Gallardo, Aleyda Acosta-Rangel, Zhanao Deng, Jack Rechcigl, Tianyuan Luo, and Qi Qiu.https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/hs1409

Misallocation in Open Economy

This paper estimates the impact of reducing export and import tariffs on firm input choices. In presence of borrowing constraints, lower export tariffs facilitate the reallocation of capital and labor inputs across firms, while a decline in import tariffs either tightens import competition or increases the availability of imported inputs; all three mechanisms suggest that a higher degree of openness should be associated with lower misallocation. To analyze the empirical relationship between openness and input misallocation, we draw on the annual surveys conducted by the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) between 1998 and 2007. From the surveys, we con- struct firm-level measures of input misallocation that control for firm heterogeneity; we identify shocks to openness using industry tariff levels and firm trade shares. We find that firm facing higher tariffs in either import or export markets make less optimal input choices. We further decompose our analysis between input and output tariffs: our results suggest that the labor reallocation mainly occurs because of lower input tariffs, while the selection effect induced by changes in output tariffs does not necessarily cause more distorted firms to exit and, therefore, tends to have an insignificant effect on input allocation. Finally, we calculate the contribution of tariff changes towards aggregate misallocation and productivity: our results indicate that the impact of firm-level tariff reductions on aggregate misallocation and productivity was marginal in our sample period, but the presence of sizeable interactions between trade shocks and mis- allocation at the sector level suggests that our result should be interpreted as a lower bound of the overall effect.

Multiple Linear Regression Approach for Strategic Decisions on Industrial Productivity under Limited Available Budget

Proper planning and improved productivity is highly desired in industrial settings to optimize the available resources when there is limited resources and to control excessive spending in time of surplus. Productivity is achievable by good levels of Materials, Time and Labor inputs which needs to be measured scientifically in order to maintain long run profit. This study explored processing data and incorporated Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) to find the relationship and predict the response of the available budget with the inputs of Materials, Time and Labor using Olam Cocoa Processing Industry, Nigeria as case study. The analyses were done using Multiple Linear Regression Model developed (i.e. ), it was discovered that the inputs of the selected strategic decisions collectively affected the response of the available budget with F-value of 88.48 but each of them cannot reduce or increase the amount of budget except for manpower which has 0.069 or 93.1 % significant effect on the available budget. Also, Coefficient of determination established a strong fitness of the relationship between the strategic decisions and the available budget with the value of 0.974 (or 97.4 %). It is recommended that the project manager should subject his decisions making into scientific measures rather than brainstorming so as to increase productivity in the company.