Growth and Decomposition of Millets in Odisha: 1960-61 to 2019-20

Background: Odisha started a programme to revive millets in 2017. Keeping this in the background, this paper examines growth of production, area and yield and decomposition of production of millets in Odisha in the last six decades by using triennium ending data, TE1962-63 to TE2019-20. Methods: Boyce’s kinked exponential method has been used to estimate growth for production, area and yield. Production was decomposed to area, yield and interaction effects. Millets as a crop group is compared with other foodgrain groups and then analysis was carried out for four specific millet crops - ragi, jowar, bajra and small millets. Result: In Odisha, the 1960s and 1970s indicate an increasing trend in production of and area under millets. There is a reversal of these trends since 1980s. The decline started first for small millets in the 1980s and subsequently since the 1990s for the three major millets - bajra, jowar and ragi. Decomposition of millets production indicates that the decline since 1980s is largely on account of area effect, but also because of yield effect in the 1990s and 2010s.

Application of Different Rates and Frequencies of Rejuvenator for the Treatments of Brown Bast Syndrome on Hevea brasiliensis

Background: Brown bast is one of the most serious threats to natural rubber production. It is estimated that brown bast leads to an approximately 15-20% decrease in latex yield production. There is currently no effective method to control this problem and an effort to overcome this problem is in progress by the natural rubber producing countries. Methods: This study evaluated the effect and the most suitable rate and frequency of Rejuvenator application to cure brown bast (latex dryness) and improve latex yield. The Rejuvenator treatment was applied to the selected tree with two different treatment frequencies (every 3 days and every 6 days) and three different Rejuvenator concentrations (5 g/L, 10 g/L and 5 g/L). The Rejuvenator was applied 5 times. Data on latex yield and brown bast cure were then recorded 1 month after the application of the last treatment. The treatments used were T1: No Rejuvenator, T2: 5 g/L of Rejuvenator, T3: 10 g/L of Rejuvenator, T4: 15 g/L of Rejuvenator. Result: Of all the treatment used, T3 (10 g/L) resulted in higher production of latex yield and Hevea bark nutrient concentration (g/t/t) than control. It also gave the highest nutrient content in the bark tissue. The findings of this study reveal that the optimum concentration and frequency of Rejuvenator application were established at 10 g/L every 6 days. More so, the findings explain that inadequate nutrients can be attributed to the brown bast syndrome in rubber plantation which can be prevented with the use of a rejuvenator to the tree’s bark.

An Improvement of Yield Production Rate for Crops by Predicting Disease Rate using Intelligent Decision System

Agriculture is the country's mainstay. Plant diseases reduce production and thus product prices. Clearly, prices of edible and non-edible goods rose dramatically after the outbreak. We can save plants and correct pricing inconsistencies using automated disease detection. Using light detection and range (LIDAR) to identify plant diseases lets farmers handle dense volumes with minimal human intervention. To address the limitations of passive systems like climate, light variations, viewing angle, and canopy architecture, LIDAR sensors are used. The DSRC was used to receive an alert signal from the cloud server and convey it to farmers in real-time via cluster heads. For each concept, we evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, as well as the potential for future research. This research work aims to improve the way deep neural networks identify plant diseases. Google Net, Inceptionv3, Res Net 50, and Improved Vgg19 are evaluated before Biased CNN. Finally, our proposed Biased CNN (B-CNN) methodology boosted farmers' production by 93% per area.

Solid Acid Hydrolysis for Isolation of Cellulose Nanocrystals and Chitin Nanocrystals – A mini review

Cellulose and chitin are two of the most abundant biopolymer on earth, have been attracted a lot of interest from many researchers, especially related to their nanoparticles form. Recently the method to extract them into nanoscale materials mostly by mineral or liquid acid hydrolysis, such as sulfuric and hydrochloric acid. Despite their high yield production, many disadvantages are produced by their use as a hydrolysis catalyst, such as low thermal stability and are difficult to be functionalized due to the presence of sulfate groups, tendency to be aggregated due to the bare surface charge density, the potential excessive degradation of cellulose; and large amounts of effluent will be produced due to the neutralization stage and corrosion hazards to the equipment and environment. To overcome the drawback of those acids, solid acid can be used to produce cellulose (CNC) and chitin nanocrystals (ChNC). Their ability to recrystallize and recycle makes them more environmentally friendly, furthermore, most of the acid can do esterification on the surface of cellulose and chitin. The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical review of recent progress related to solid acid hydrolysis since they have interesting characterization even some of their attribute is better than the conventional method.