Livelihood Implications of Pulse in an Operating Cropping System

Aims: To delineate the general status of pulse cultivation and enterprise in West Bengal and estimate the nature, level and direction of interactive relationships among the dependent variables, wages and man-days required in pulse crop cultivation, a set of economic and ecological variables were selected for the study. Study Design: The locale was selected by purposive sampling technique and the respondents, pulse cultivators, were selected by the simple random sampling method. Place of Study: Dhanara and Manara GP of the Manbazar-1 and Purulia-1 block of Purulia district in West Bengal were purposively selected for the study. Methodology: In this study 75 respondents, following pulse cultivation, were selected by the simple random sampling method. A preliminary interview schedule was administered to understand the knowledge, perceptions and attitudes of the people towards climate changes concept, communication and extension system, effect of climate change on pulse production. The gathered data were analysed with multivariate analysis. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences V20.0 (SPSS) of IBM was used for analyzing the Coefficient of Correlation, Multiple Regression followed by Stepwise Regression. Results: Education (X2), Size of holding(x6), Cropping Intensity(x8), Distance From Market(x12) and Crop Biodiversity(x16) variables were found to exert strong and determining contribution to estimate dependent variables wages (y1) and man-days (y2) required in pulse crop cultivation and the set of economic and ecological variables as selected for the study. Conclusion: The present study has uniquely landed on the value of some important empirical revelation. It can be concluded that pulse as a new intern crop enterprise has been responsive to crop biodiversity, soil health management, and distributive nature of land-resource in the form of fragments and also other ecological and economical aspects. This crop has got a big role for stabilizing national economy by putting up a deterrent to export expenditure in procures pulses from outside India.

Socio-economic and technological typology of avocado cv. Hass farms from Antioquia (Colombia)

ABSTRACT: A typology of avocado cv. Hass farms was constructed based on information collected from productive units in Antioquia, Colombia. The study aimed to provide key information about the farms for those involved in the design of programs and public policies directed to growers. The data were scrutinized through Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) and Cluster Analysis. The sample was made up of 214 growers of the crop. Quantitative and qualitative variables were employed for the MCA, which rendered 40 dimensions, out of which 16 accounted for 70% of the total inertia (variance) found in the data. These 16 dimensions were used as input for the Cluster Analysis, which provided the following results: 52%, 32% and 15% of the farms were located in Clusters 1, 2 and 3, respectively. The identified farm types can be associated to peasant (Cluster 1) and commercial (Cluster 3) agricultural schemes, plus a transition between them (Cluster 2). The most discriminating variables regarding such categorization were: farm size, farm registry at ICA (Colombian Agricultural Institute), Avocado cv. Hass yield, labor source, presence of crops other than avocado, existence of formal commercial alliances and technical assistance type. The percentage of farmers belonging to grower organizations was high in the three clusters. Growers in Clusters 3 and 2 had established formal commercial alliances which enabled them to access better sale prices for the crop. A trend towards establishing cv. Hass as a monocrop is observed, which may threaten both crop biodiversity and the food security of peasant growers.

Crop Biodiversity: An Unfinished Magnum Opus of Nature

Crop biodiversity is one of the major inventions of humanity through the process of domestication. It is also an essential resource for crop improvement to adapt agriculture to ever-changing conditions like global climate change and consumer preferences. Domestication and the subsequent evolution under cultivation have profoundly shaped the genetic architecture of this biodiversity. In this review, we highlight recent advances in our understanding of crop biodiversity. Topics include the reduction of genetic diversity during domestication and counteracting factors, a discussion of the relationship between parallel phenotypic and genotypic evolution, the role of plasticity in genotype × environment interactions, and the important role subsistence farmers play in actively maintaining crop biodiversity and in participatory breeding. Linking genotype and phenotype remains the holy grail of crop biodiversity studies.

Discontinuities in quinoa biodiversity in the dry Andes: an 18-century perspective based on allelic genotyping

History and environment shape crop biodiversity, particularly in areas with vulnerable human communities and ecosystems. Tracing crop biodiversity over time helps understand how rural societies cope with anthropogenic or climatic changes. Exceptionally well preserved ancient DNA of quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) from the cold and arid Andes of Argentina has allowed us to track changes and continuities in quinoa diversity over 18 centuries, by coupling genotyping of 157 ancient and modern seeds by 24 SSR markers with cluster and coalescence analyses. Cluster analyses revealed clear population patterns separating modern and ancient quinoas. Coalescence-based analyses revealed that genetic drift within a single population cannot explain genetic differentiation among ancient and modern quinoas. The hypothesis of a genetic bottleneck related to the Spanish Conquest also does not seem to apply at a local scale. Instead, the most likely scenario is the replacement of preexisting quinoa gene pools with new ones of lower genetic diversity. This process occurred at least twice in the last 18 centuries: first, between the 6th and 12th centuries—a time of agricultural intensification well before the Inka and Spanish conquests—and then between the 13th century and today—a period marked by farming marginalization in the late 19th century likely due to a severe multidecadal drought. While these processes of local gene pool replacement do not imply losses of genetic diversity at the metapopulation scale, they support the view that gene pool replacement linked to social and environmental changes can result from opposite agricultural trajectories.