HortFlora Research Spectrum

1-6

Authors: Pravesh Kumar, R.P. Singh, Anil Kumar Singh and Vijai Kumar

Globally studied remote sensing and geographical information systems data indicated that over 1 billion hectares of agricultural land have more than 10% tree cover, and these areas are home to almost a third of the 1.8 billion people who live on agricultural land. Agroforestry systems and practices vary across the globe such as simple subsistence livestock and pastoral systems to shifting cultivation, home gardens, alley cropping etc. It is estimated that the area currently under agroforestry worldwide is 1,023 m ha. Additionally, substantial extent of areas of unproductive crop, grass, and forest lands as well as degraded lands could be brought under agroforestry. This paper is an attempt to quantification of various agroforestry systems and practices at the global level.

14-20

Authors: P. Sujathamma, G. Savithri, N. Vijaya Kumari1, V. Asha Krishna1, T.Vijaya, K.V. S. S. Sairam and N. Sreerama Reddy

Mulberry is the sole food source of silkworm Bombyx mori L. In sericulture the quality of mulberry leaf plays a major role as it influences the quality of silk cocoons. In mulberry, organic carbon and soil moisture have a tremendous influence on leaf yield and quality. In light of the above as well as growing need for maintaining soil fertility and health for sustainable sericulture, the present study was undertaken. In this study six treatments comprising of organic nitrogen, organic phosphorus and organic potassium were applied and the effect of all these inputs on the yield and quality parameters of mulberry were studied in comparison with chemical fertilizers. Studies revealed that T6 and T4 have shown positive results compared to control. Application of Aishwarya as basal dose followed by the foliar application of the organic nutrients resulted in positive increase in the yield and quality parameters. Significant increase in average length of shoot, weight of 100 fresh leaves and leaf yield were noticed in all the treatments with organic manures over control involving only chemical fertilizers. In respect of the biochemical composition of mulberry leaf, organic manure treatments showed significantly higher values in respect of moisture content, moisture retaining capacity after 12 hours, total chlorophyll content, protein percentage and carbohydrate percentage over the application of chemical fertilizer.

29-34

Authors: Anil Kumar Sachan, Arun Kumar, M.M. Rajput and Arti Katiyar

The study was conducted in rose growing pockets of Kannauj district of Uttar Pradesh with an objective of estimating the cost of production and marketing and margins in the trade of loose rose flowers by the farmers. The study indicated that cost of production is the highest in the first year as expenses on field preparation. Gross production cost per hectare is estimated to be Rs. 89550 in first year. The total cost of marketing of rose flowers is estimated to be Rs. 9.60 per kilogram. Labour charges, quantity loss, transportation, commission and packing are important constituents of marketing costs. Total cost including production and marketing was calculated to be Rs. 89550/ha. Producer got only Rs. 12.68/kg at the profit margin i.e. merely 26.66 per cent of the “consumer rupee”, whole saler and retailers saved a large part of the price paid by the consumer. Profit year for farmers was also calculated and it was found that farmers start earning profit from the fourth year.

40-44

Authors: Ashish Kumar Gupta, Deepak Singh and Anil Kumar Singh

The incidence of leaf spots of Drechslera specifera and Curvularia lunata during April-June was observed to the extent of 72.68 to 88.55 and 11.45 to 27.32 per cent, respectively, whereas, Alternaria and Cercospora leaf spots were absent. The disease incidence of Alternaria alternata was maximum in the month of July-September ranging 19.11 to 29.23 per cent and that of Cercospora populina was higher in October-November than July-September being 18.60 to 28.70 per cent. In vitro testing of five fungicides namely Dithane M-45, Kavach, Blitox-50, Bayleton and Bavistin against D. specifera, C. lunata and A. alternata revealed Dithane M-45 to be most effective, whereas, Bayleton and Bavistin were least effective against all these fungi. The in vivo testing of fungicides in nursery proved Dithane M-45 at 0.20 per cent concentration best against D. specifera, C. lunata, A. alternata and C. populina as it totally inhibited the disease under field condition. Next effective fungicides were Kavach and Blitox-50, however, Bayleton and Bavistin were least effective.

51-55

Authors: Manoj Kumar Singh, Vivek Pandey and Shamsher Singh

The experiment was conducted with parent, 45 F1s and 45 F2s population developed through diallel excluding reciprocals along with 10 parents viz., Azad B-1, Type-3, KS-224, KS-235, DVR-8, Azad Kranti, KS-331, PPL, KS-503 and KS-504 in Randomized Block Design with three replications at the Research Farm of the Department of Vegetable Science, C.S. Azad University of Agriculture and Technology, Kalyanpur, Kanpur during kharif 2010. The observations were recorded on 5 randomly selected plants from each row for ten quantitative traits namely, days to flowering, height of plant, number of branches per plant, length of leaf, width of leaf, length of fruit, width of fruit and number of fruits per plant. Genetic component of variance showed significant value for additive component (D) which was significant for width of leaf, length of fruit, width of fruit, number of fruits per plant and weight per fruit on both the generation except days to flowering and plant height based on F1 and number of branches per plant based on F2 only.The dominance components (H) were also highly significant for all the characters under study in both the generations. The degree of dominance (H1/D)0.5 showed over dominance for all the characters in both the generations. The ratio of KD/KR showed presence of more dominant alleles for all the characters based on F1 and F2 generation, while less than unity in F2 generation only for days to flowering and length of fruit. Other characters showed more amount of successive alleles. The ratio of (h2/H2) showed more than two gene group for length of leaf and width of fruit in F1 and F2 generation, respectively. More than three gene groups for length of leaf and weight of brinjal fruit in F2 & F1 & F2 generation, respectively. More than five gene groups for width of leaf in F1, more than six gene groups for width of leaf in F2 generation and other characters showed at least one gene group with some modification for controlling the traits

61-64

Authors: T.N. Goswami and A.K. Mukhopadhyay

Study was undertaken in quest of impact of agro-climatic condition on the morphometric and biological variations of diamondback moth populations in six distinct agro-climatic regions, viz., Hilly Region, Tarai Region, Bindhya Alluvial Region, Gangetic Alluvial Region and Coastal Region of West Bengal, India. Morphometry of DBM populations from the different agro-climatic regions of West Bengal explicitly unveiled existence of heterogeneity in the insect populations which was maintained through the successive developmental stages of the same generation as well as through the successive generations. Study on various biological parameters of the DBM populations from the above mentioned regions was also undertaken for successive four generations under constant temperature and humidity regime and same food materials. It was recorded that with regard to fecundity and mating duration in all the four generations, populations of Tarai Region, Gangetic Alluvial Region, Bindhya Alluvial Region and Coastal Region were quite congruent to each other whereas populations of the Hilly Region and Lateritic Region were heterogeneous to the formers but close to each other.

69-72

Authors: Hariom Katiyar,Vijai Kumar, Vandana Umrao, Naveen Chandra and S.K.Verma

The maximum genetic divergence for quality characters (3145.78) was observed between cluster-I and III. The highest cluster mean values for growth characters viz. shoot girth, plant height and yield (q/ha) were observed in cluster-II. While for quality characters cluster-I showed maximum cluster mean for protein content, nitrogen content, phosphorus content and specific gravity. Cluster VII showed maximum cluster mean value for specific gravity. The characters viz. plant height, leaf area, tuber weight, number of stolen per hill and number of tuber per hill contributed maximum towards diversity in descending order. There is no parallelism between geographical and genetic divergence. Thus, based on the findings of present investigation it can be concluded that good diversity and variability was present in the genotypes tested.

77-80

Authors: K. K. Singh, T. Choudhary, Prabhat Kumar and J.M.S. Rawat

The present investigation was conducted in the mist house located at the HNB Garhwal University, Srinagar, Garhwal, Uttarakhand, India. Softwood cuttings of Duranta erecta ver. golden were collected from 2 to 4 year old plants and 15 cm long cuttings with apical portion. The cuttings were treated with 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5g.L1 IBA solutions by quick dip method. Among all the treatments, highest number of roots per cutting (43.00), length of roots per cutting (9.28 cm), diameter of root per cutting (1.67 mm), percentage of rooted cutting (88.00 %), number of sprouts per cuttings (4.34) and the minimum (20.66) days taken to callus formation was noticed in 4g L1IBA concentration.

85-87

Authors: J.P. Kirthisinghe and H.W.J.P. Amarasekara

Pleurotus ostreatus is an edible mushroom, commercially important, predominantly grown variety and widely cultivated in small scale for self-employment in Sri Lanka. Successful mushroom cultivation depends on reliable spawn and good substrate. Most of the growers in mid country buy the reliable spawn from Department of Agriculture (DOA), Peradeniya. Therefore, this experiment was carried out to find out the possibility of using the grower produce spawn run as the initial planting material and to identify the suitable substrate for production of oyster mushroom for the new method. The experiment was conducted for two seasons in the mushroom unit, University Experimental Station, Dodangolla. 5 g of spawn of oyster mushroom for treatments 1 and 3, and 10 g of spawn run for treatments 2 and 4 were used as the planting material. The saw dust substrate for treatments 1 and 2 and the paddy substrate for treatments 3 and 4 were used in polypropylene bags. No significant difference was observed among treatments on spawn runing and pin head formation. A significant difference was observed between the two substrates used in this experiment for the time taken for the first harvest and the total harvest. This study revealed that spawn and spawn run can be use as a planting material and they have no significant impact on duration of spawn runing and pin head formation. In contrast the paddy straw was a better substrate compared to saw dust, which had a great impact on growth and gave the first harvest within 29-30 days. The total harvest was also significantly higher in paddy straw substrate compared to saw dust. Since there was no significant yield difference between the spawn and spawn run treatments the growers will be able to save a rupee from each bag.

91-93

Authors: Manoj Kumar Singh

Peroxidase isozyme analysis was carried out for identification of ten prominent poplar clones namely G48, S7C4,G3, S7C1, S7C8, S7C20, L34, PP5, Fierelo and D121. Leaf extract used for polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. On the basis of banding pattern all the genotype were grouped into four groups. All the genotypes are distinct in banding pattern and their relative mobility except G3 and L34.

97-99

Authors: A. Kumar, R. B. Ram, M.L. Meena, U. Raj and A. K. Anand

The current experiment on effect of biofertilizers on morphological characters of grafted aonla plants revealed that treatment of biofertilizers with different combinations showed their significant effects. The combination of AMF + Azospirillum enhanced higher morphological growth performance than other combinations. The AMF + Azospirillum applicated grafted plants produced more leaves and shoot length which could have increase the rate of photosynthesis. This combination also have more roots per plant than other combinations.

103-105

Authors: Manoj Kumar Singh, J.R. Yadav and B. M. Singh

High heritability estimates in narrow sense were observed for length of fruit, width of fruit and weight per fruit in F1 generation. Other characters showed moderate heritability in both the generation. High genetic advance in weight per fruit and plant height was observed for single cycle of selection in F1 generation. The probable genetic gain was high for weight per fruit, length of fruit and width of leaf. For fruit yield per plant it was more than 4.5% per cycle of selection. Th e highest coefficient variability was found for number of branches per plant followed by number of fruits per plant, width of leaf, length of fruit in parents, F1s populations at both genotypic and phenotypic levels. Biparental matting as well as matting among selected plants in early segregating generation would also help in developing population having optimum homozygous and heterozygous balance