Community empowerment is an important goal for many governments in developing countries. Various activities for the empowerment of communities have been conducted in developing countries like Pakistan. The present research attempted to assess an activity of community empowerment on the Crop Maximization Project (CMP-II) in Sindh province, Pakistan. A total of 455 small farmers were surveyed using questionnaire in three districts namely; Khairpur, Nawabshah and Mirpurkhas. The level of empowerment was assessed based on three domains namely; capacity building, self-esteem and self-efficacy. The findings of the study showed that, there was a moderate level of empowerment among the beneficiaries (small farmers) of the crop maximization projects of the Sindh province based on a summed mean score of 178.77 for the three dimensions of empowerment. Therefore, it is concluded that projects like crop maximization are able to empower the beneficiaries as the intangible outcomes.

Sustainable crop management relies on the combined use of organic and inorganic sources of nutrients. The experiment was laid out in a split plot design with manures (control, farmyard manure, sesbania and cluster bean) as main split and mineral fertilizer rates (control, 40-30, 60-45, 80-60, 90-70 and 120-90 kg N-P2O5 ha-1) as sub-split. The manures significantly influenced shoot dry weight, N, P and K uptake and soil properties. Conversely, the rates of mineral fertilizers did not have any effect on soil properties, however, significantly enhanced the shoot dry weight and N, P and K uptake. The combined use of manures and mineral fertilizers had a significant effect on shoot P uptake. Farmyard manure was the best manure amendment with 13% reduction in bulk density and 51% increase in organic matter content over control. Incorporation of farmyard manure increased the shoot dry weight and N, P and K uptake, respectively by 8, 14, 11 and 8% over control. Among rates of mineral fertilizers, recommended rate of mineral fertilizer (120-90 kg N-P2O5 ha-1) was the best treatment with corresponding increase of 26, 81, 56 and 55% in shoot dry weight, N, P and K uptake over control. Integration of farmyard manure with recommended rate of mineral fertilizer enhanced shoot P uptake by 17% as compared to solo application of mineral fertilizers. Through this study, it was concluded that farmyard manure at 6 tons ha-1 coupled with mineral fertilizer rate of 120-90 kg N-P2O5 ha-1 was the best source for sustainable soil health and wheat production. .

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The screening of different varieties is one of the key strategies used in Integrated Pest Management to control the insect population and to escape the use of synthetic insecticides. This study was aimed to screen different okra varieties against sucking insect pest complex such as thrip, jassid, aphid, whitefly and mealybug. The experiment was conducted at Agriculture Research Institute Tandojam. The varieties such as Rama Krishna, Silky-460 and Bharat Kawairi were cultivated in RCBD layout and each treatment was replicated five times. The results revealed that the most infested variety was Bharat Kaiwari followed by Silky-460 and Rama Krishna throughout the experimental period. The highest mean population of the sucking insect pests (thrip, jassid, aphid, whitefly and mealybug) was 9.61±0.35, 3.22±0.13, 18.33±0.50, 3.25±0.15 and 3.75±0.19 respectively was observed on Bharat Kaiwari and the lowered on Rama Krishna. However, the attack of aphid was prominent on all okra varieties and overall pest attack was higher in the month of June. Similarly, the co-efficient correlation analysis showed a positive relationship of temperature and humidity (r= 0.012; r = 0.128) with thrip population whereas there was a negative relationship between temperature and humidity with remaining sucking pests. Both jassid and mealybug population indicated a significant difference with temperature. Similarly, relative humidity displayed a significant impact on population of mealybug (r = 0.365) and aphid (r = -0.096). Thus, it could be concluded based on the results that Rama Krishna is the most resistance against sucking insect pests as compared to Silky-460 and Bharat Kaiwairi.

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