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Women play a major and crucial role in doing the agricultural operations. The women workers in Udaipur district mostly uses sickle and kudali for doing weeding operations. This study was conducted in 2019-20 at instructional Farm, CTAE, Udaipur with women farm workers during the manual weeding operation by using different traditional tools like hand hoe (kudali) along with technically and ergonomically designed wheel hand hoe. The main objective of the study was to investigate the most drudgery prone tool and to recommend the proper tool for doing weeding operations in maize crop. Use of proper tools not only reduce the drudgery but also improves the operating efficiency along with the comfort, besides improving the productivity of the women farm workers in doing the operation. In view of this, an effort has been made to assess the physical and physiological parameters of women farm workers who are using traditional farm tools along with the improved tools for doing weeding operation in maize crop. The whole study was conducted on ten female farm workers identified from the population of workers in the age group of 18 to 45 years. During the experiment, physiological workload i.e., heart rate, oxygen consumption rate, energy expenditure rate and physical workload i.e., overall discomfort rate, rate of perceived exertion and Musculo-skeletal problems were measured. The Pratap wheel hand hoe saves nearly 36% of the cardiac cost of the worker per unit of output and wheel hand hoe saves nearly 38% of the cardiac cost of the worker per unit of output which is nothing but reduction in drudgery by 36% and 38% by both the weeding tools over kudali. Area covered with Pratap wheel hand hoe and wheel hand hoe were 1.70 and 1.69 times more over kudali.

Phosphorus is a second key plant nutrient and the 'kingpin' in Indian agriculture, occupies an exclusive position both in conventional as well as in alternative agriculture. However, the phosphate solubilizing bacteria (PSB) converts the insoluble phosphate into biologically available form through the production of organic acids. Hence, the present study explored the presence of PSB from the Karavalasu agricultural field, Sivagiri, Erode District. The percentages of bacterial solubilization were 14.40 % to 60.70 % in non rhizospheric and rhizospheric crops adhering to root soils respectively.Out of 14 morphologically distinct isolates of PSB, two isolates (PSB8 and PSB11) displayed high P solubilization efficiency on solid medium amended with tricalcium phosphate Ca 3 (PO 4) 2 as the insoluble source (0.2 %). They were further characterized and continued with identification used by Picovskaya's selective medium. The selective medium was incubated for 48 hours at a temperature of 37°C. The characterization was done for two strains by looking at the colony morphology and biochemical properties. The isolates showed the optimum pH for growth of the organism was pH 7 and the optimum temperature was 37 °C. Two strains exhibited significant release of P at the concentrations of 1.96 and 2.26 mg/l by PSB-8 and PSB-11 respectively on 10 th day of incubation in broth medium amended with Ca 3 (PO 4) 2. The strains released acids as evident by decline in pH of the broth medium. They also secreted IAA with the maximum of 17.06 mg/l by PSB-8 with Ca 3 (PO 4) 2 as a source of P. The potential strains for P solubilization were identified using 16S rRNA as Bacillus megaterium and Pseudomonas aeruginosa for further application as bioinoculants to agricultural fields. Finally we afford some indication that the use of Phosphate solubilising microorganisms will support sustainable agriculture and conclude that this knowledge is ready for commercial utilization in various regions worldwide.

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Women play a major and crucial role within the agricultural operations. Agriculture is the major occupation in our country and more than 70% of the population depends directly or indirectly on agriculture. In India, 82% of the farmers own marginal and small land less than 2 hectares (Food and agriculture organization). Most Percentages of the women hail from rural areas where the impact of science and technology on the standard of living is limited. This study was conducted to investigate the Percentage participation of women farm workers in agriculture activities in district Udaipur during 2019-20. Five villages of Vallabh Nagar and Gogunda block/Tehsil of the Udaipur district of Rajasthan state were selected randomly for this study, representing the maize-wheat cropping area of the zone. An interview schedule was used to collect data from a random sample from 500 farmers with farm units less than or equal to 2 hectares and follows maize-wheat cropping system. Women in the study area showed active participation in agricultural activities together and alone in Gogunda and Vallabh Nagar blocks. Women of study area also showed the highest traditional participation and spends much time in agriculture activities. The average time spent by women per hectare basis in weeding operations, cob picking, stalk harvesting during maize crop are 94-161, 214, 99-118 hours/hectare/woman respectively and 110 – 138 hours/hectare/woman during harvesting in wheat crop. These activities are considered the most drudgery prone activities in Maize-Wheat cropping system. Moreover, women perform some of these identified tasks traditionally due to limited knowledge and skill in applying science and technology to daily living, which consumes most of their time and energy. These were the major causes of discontentment among women involved in agricultural activities. There is no doubt that some of the traditional implement have low risk. Still, at the same time they also have a low level of productivity whereas, improved agricultural tools and implements provides high productivity.