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A protocol for characterizing patterns of rice cropping practices and injuries due to pathogens, insects, and weeds was developed and used in six sites in tropical Asia covering a wide range of environments where lowland rice is cultivated. The data collected in a total population of 456 individual farmers' fields were combined to site-specific weather data and analyzed using non-parametric multivariate techniques: cluster analyses with chi-square distance and correspondence analyses. The main results are: (i) patterns of cropping practices that are common across sites can be identified; (ii) conversely, injury profiles that are common across sites can be determined; (iii) patterns of cropping practices and injury profiles are strongly associated at the regional scale; (iv) weather patterns are strongly associated with patterns of cropping practices and injury profiles; (v) patterns of cropping practices and injury profiles allow for a good description of the variation in actual yield; and (vi) patterns of cropping practices and injury profiles provide a framework that accurately reflects weather variation and site diversity, and reliably accounts for variation in yield. The mean estimated yield across sites (4.12 t ha-1) corresponds to commonly cited averages in the region and indicates the potential for increased productivity with better management practices, especially an improved water supply. Injuries due to pests are secondary compared with other yield-limiting factors. Injury profiles were dominated by stem rot and sheath blight (IN1); bacterial leaf blight, plant hoppers, and leaf folder (IN2); and sheath rot, brown spot, leaf blast, and neck blast (IN3). IN1 was associated with high (mineral) fertilizer inputs, long fallow periods, low pesticide use, and good water management in (mostly) transplanted rice crops of a rice-rice rotation. IN2 was associated with direct-seeded rice crops in an intensive rice-rice rotation, where fertilizer and pesticide inputs are low and water management is poor, or where fertilizer and pesticide inputs are high and water management is adequate. IN3 corresponds to low input, labor intensive (hand weeding and transplanting) rice crops in a diverse rotation system with uncertain water supply. Weed infestation was an omnipresent constraint. This study shows the potential for developing pest management strategies that can be adapted throughout the region, rather than being site-specific.

A simulation study was conducted to assess the current and prospective efficiency of rice pest management and develop research priorities for lowland production situations in tropical Asia. Simulation modeling with the RICEPEST model provided the flexibility required to address varying production situations and diverse pest profiles (bacterial leaf blight, sheath blight, brown spot, leaf blast, neck blast, sheath rot, white heads, dead hearts, brown plant-hoppers, insect defoliators, and weeds). Operational definitions for management efficacy (injury reduction) and management efficiency (yield gain) were developed. This approach enabled the modeling of scenarios pertaining to different pest management strategies within the agroecological contexts of rice production and their associated pest injuries. Rice pests could be classified into two broad research priority-setting categories with respect to simulated yield losses and management efficiencies. One group, including weeds, sheath blight, and brown spot, consists of pests for which effective pest management tools need to be developed. The second group consists of leaf blast, neck blast, bacterial leaf blight, and brown plant-hoppers, for which the efficiency of current management methods is to be maintained. Simulated yield losses in future production situations indicated that a new type of rice plant with high-harvest index and high-biomass production ("New Plant Type") was more vulnerable to pests than hybrid rice. Simulations also indicated that the impact of deployment of host resistance (e.g., through genetic engineering) was much larger when targeted against sheath blight than when targeted against stem borers. Simulated yield losses for combinations of production situations and injury profiles that dominate current lowland rice production in tropical Asia ranged from 140 to 230 g m(-2). For these combinations, the simulated efficiency of current pest management methods, expressed in terms of relative yield gains, ranged from 0.38 to 0.74. Overall, the analyses indicated that 120 to 200 x 10(6) tons of grain yield are lost yearly to pests over the 87 x 10(6) ha of lowland rice in tropical Asia. This also amounts to the potential gain that future pest management strategies could achieve, if deployed.

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Photonic all-optical switching is widely considered as one of the technique to utilize the enormous optical bandwidth. Optical packet switching provides high speed, data rate transparency, data format transparency, efficient use of bandwidth and flexibility. To resolve the conflict during contention, packets are needed to be buffered. Due to the lack of optical RAM, fiber delay lines (FDLs) are the most suited option to buffer the packets. This paper proposes new optical packet switch architecture alongwith feedback shared buffer utilizing the advantage of WDM loop buffer memory. The loop buffer module used in this switch architecture is a new approach towards WDM buffering of packets. The mathematical modeling is done to validate the results obtained from simulation.