The precise information regarding the date of sowing, seed rate and row spacing is critical for achieving yield targets and better economic returns of barley. Therefore here, we determined the information regarding the optimum date of sowing, seed rate, spacing and economic aspects for barley production. This study was conducted for three years, in north Indian plains. Early sowing date of barley (last week of October) recorded higher yield in comparison to late sown crop (3rd week of November). Moreover, the higher barley production proved more remunerative when sown early in the last week of October to the first week of November as compared to late sown the late sown crop. Furthermore, the enhanced seed rate of 10% then recommended did not affect the grain yield of barley. But, the closer spacing of 20 cm (row to row) produced higher grain yield (5.45 Mg ha-1 ) than the recommended spacing of 22.5 cm (5.30 Mg ha-1). Likewise, the economical parameters (net returns) were higher with 20 cm row spacing. Overall, this study determines the optimum date of sowing, seed rate and spacing for scoring better returns of barley crop under north Indian conditions.

The study was carried out on the preservation of epididymal spermatozoa of buck at refrigerated temperature without and with tomato juice as a supplement in Tris egg yolk citrate extender. The eight pairs of testicles including epididymis (total 16) from slaughtered bucks were collected within 2–4 hours of their slaughter. Sperms collected from cauda epididymis were preserved at refrigerated temperature up to 48 hours in tris egg yolk citrate extender at 300 million sperm/mL with different concentration of tomato juice (0%, 4%, 6%, 8%, and 10%) and the physical characteristics of spermatozoa were assessed to know the effect of tomato juice (Tj). The mean dead, abnormal and HOST non-reacted spermatozoa increased significantly (p less than0.05) at every 12-hour intervals of preservation in the dilutor without and with different concentration of tomato juice. Tomato juice exerted an adverse effect on physical characteristics of sperm during refrigeration preservation. All the three sperm traits studied however revealed significant (p less thaN 0.01) positive interrelationships with correlations of 0.31 to 0.72.