Sugarcane being a long duration crop of 10-18 months faces many biotic and abiotic stresses which causes heavy losses in cane production and productivity. Timely and accurate diagnosis, of disorders that appear in crop due to these stresses, is required to reduce the losses. Paper illustrates CaneDES, an expert system to diagnose disorders in sugarcane caused by various biotic and abiotic stresses. It is a web based system available in both Hindi and English languages with remote accessibility to sugarcane farmers. A new classified knowledge representation technique has been adopted for the development of expert system, to manage the diagnostic knowledge efficiently. System was evaluated with the help of domain experts and extension personnel engaged in the services of sugarcane farmers. Evaluation was made in terms of time taken by extension personnel in diagnosis of disorder and confidence factor received from the system and results indicated high usability and efficiency of the system. System is of generic nature and can be used in other crop environment with changes in knowledge base.

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ABSTRACT:Multi-platform/sensor and multi-temporal satellite data facilitates analysis of successive change/monitoring over the longer period and there by forest biomass helping REDD mechanism. The historical archive satellite imagery, specifically Landsat, can play an important role for historical trend analysis of forest cover change at national level. Whereas the fresh high resolution satellite, such as ALOS, imagery can be used for detailed analysis of present forest cover status. ALOS satellite imagery is most suitable as it offers data with optical (AVNIR-2) as well as SAR (PALSAR) sensors. AVNIR-2 providing data in multispectral modes play due role in extracting forest information.In this study, a semi-automated approach has been devised for cloud/shadow and haze removal and land cover change detection. Cloud/shadow pixels are replaced by free pixels of same image with the help of PALSAR image. The tracking of pixel based land cover change for the 1995-2009 period in combination of Landsat and latest ALOS data from its AVNIR-2 for the tropical rain forest area has been carried out using Decision Tree Classifiers followed by un-supervised classification. As threshold for tree classifier, criteria of NDVI refined by reflectance value has been employed. The result shows all pixels have been successfully registered to the pre-defined 6 categories; in accordance with IPCC definition; of land cover types with an overall accuracy 80 percent.

Rice-wheat is the most commonly employed cropping system on around 14 million hectares of land extending across the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP). The IGP region covers the South Asian countries of Pakistan (2.2 million ha), India (10.5 million ha), Nepal (0.5 million ha) and Bangladesh (0.8 million ha). The major challenge facing the IGP's rice-wheat cropping system is to sustain long-term productivity. This system has a pivotal role in the food security and livelihoods of millions of farmers and workers of populous countries such as India, particularly in central Uttar Pradesh. The system's productivity and economic gains have been consistently decreasing, mainly because of the delayed sowing of wheat after the rice harvest and the fatigued soil condition. The region's farmers lose valuable time for pre-sowing irrigation and field preparation due to the gap of two to three weeks between the harvesting of rice and the planting of wheat. If wheat sowing is delayed beyond the optimal time (by late November), yields plummet at the rate of 30 kg per ha per day. The adoption of resource conservation technologies, such as zero tilled wheat sowing, is considered essential to maintain the productivity of the rice-wheat cropping system. Economic analysis of data for two years from six on-farm demonstrations shows that the zero tillage method of wheat cultivation is the most economical and attractive option for the farming community of central Uttar Pradesh. A high grain yield and reduced cost of cultivation per hectare, reduction in the density of weeds, especially Phalaris minor, and greater water saving were noted in zero tilled wheat sowings compared with conventional practices. As a result of field demonstrations and farmer training programmes, the introduction of zero till drill wheat sowing has expanded rapidly and has made significant contributions to the tillage revolution in the study area.

Background: Chickpea yield losses due to weed competition have been estimated to range between 40 and 87% depending on weed species and density. As farmers continue to realize the usefulness of herbicides, larger quantities are applied to the soil. These herbicides could be leached down, then accumulate to toxic levels in the soil and become harmful to microorganisms, plant, wild life and human being. Hence, there is a need to determine the effect of different herbicides on the growth and multiplication of agriculturally important microorganisms, which in turn could affect the crop growth and yield. Thus there is a need to test pre and post-emergent herbicides for their effect on beneficial soil microflora, as they could be both beneficial and harmful depending on the herbicide used. In this context, a field experiment was conducted to study the effect of herbicides on soil microflora, root nodulation, growth and yield of chickpea under rainfed condition during the rabi season of 2017-18 and 2018-19 at Zonal Research Station, Chianki, Palamau, (Birsa Agricultural University, Ranchi), Jharkhand (India).Methods: In this experiment conducted during rabi season 2017-18 and 2018-19 at Zonal Research Station, Chianki, Birsa Agricultural University, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India. The eight treatments were taken under RBD in three replications. Observations and analysis were carried out by following the standard procedures.Result: The present investigation clearly brought out that two hand weeding followed by pendimethalin was the best sought out option on controlling weed population, for higher growth and yield of chickpea. Based on the results obtained, it could be inferred that two hand weeding are costly as compared to pendimethalin and it had least adverse effect on microbial population and nodulation. Therefore, pendimethalin can be used to get the higher plant growth and yield of chickpea.