No abstract

Due to the increase of the activities in the oil industries, higher interest has been given to enhance the recover the trapped oil and produce more oil from the matured reservoirs. Worldwide, enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is implemented in most reservoirs to recover additional amounts of oil that are not recovered during secondary recovery by water flood or gas injection. Recently, a numerous techniques such as thermal, miscible, immiscible and chemical has proposed to enhanced oil recovery and to increase the producible oil from oil reservoirs. The suitability and the success of a specific EOR process are highly sensitive to reservoir and fluid characteristics, recovery efficiency, availability of injected fluids, and costs. One of the common techniques which have been proposed recently is low salinity water flooding where the sea water with a controlled salinity and salt content is used to alter the rock wettability or enhance the fine migration and resulted in higher oil production. This study aims to investigate the possibility of using low salinity water flooding in naturally fractured reservoirs. The wettability changes are taking into account in terms of oil/water relative, saturation and capillary pressure as these parameters play a key role during the simulation of brine injection. The results show that the oil recovery significantly increases specially for water wet reservoirs as the reason behind is the decreasing water production after the breakthrough of the low saline brines.

Survey on major insect pests of groundnut was carried out in Southern Telangana Zone comprising of the three districts viz., Mahabubnagar, Nagarkurnool and Wanaparthy at three stages of crop growth period viz., vegetative, pod formation and maturity stages for identification of pest scenario. In all the three districts the mean percent damage per plant (14.50-18.85%) and mean no. of larva per plant (0.90-1.05) of tobacco caterpillar were comparatively higher at pod formation stage while percent infested plants were more during maturity stage (38.60-40.30%). With respect to gram caterpillar, the mean percent damage per plant (2.90-3.60%) and mean percent infested plants (12.80-18.50%) was higher at maturity stage while in case of the leaf miner mean percent mining per plant (1.75-3.10%) was more at vegetative stage while mean percent infested plants (7.80-9.50%) was greater at pod formation stage. The mean no. of sucking pests viz., leafhoppers and thrips were recorded to be higher during pod formation stage (2.37-2.47 and 3.92-4.02, respectively).

A total of 622 spider specimens belonging to 9 species, 7 genera and 4 families were collected from rice ecosystem under Bhubaneswar conditions by various sampling methods. The four recorded spider families in order of abundance were Araneidae < Tetragnathidae < Lycosidae < Oxyopidae. Araneidae and Tetragnathidae were the two dominant spider families as four species viz., spotted orb weaver, Neoscona elliptical (Tikader and Bal), grass cross spider, Argiope catenulate (Doleschall), orb weaving spider, Araneus sp, Larinia orb weaver, Larinia sp were recorded under family Araneidae where as three species viz., big jawed spider, Tetragnatha mandibulata (Walckenaer), long jaw spider, Tetragnatha maxillosa (Thorell), tailed tetragnathid spider, Tetragnatha javana (Thorell) were recorded under family Tetragnathidae. The families Lycosidae and Oxyopidae were represented by single species viz., wolf spider, Pardosa pseudoannulata (Boes and Strand) and lynx spider, Oxyopes bharatae (Gajbe), respectively. All the nine spider species recorded were active at vegetative stage, reproductive stage and ripening stage of the crop. Maximum population of spider (1.40/ m 2) was noticed at reproductive phase during 45 th std week (Nov 4-10) synchronizing with the peak activity period of BPH (18/hill) and WBPH (17/hill). A highly significant positive correlation existed between population of spiders irrespective of species and the incidence of leaf folder, WBPH, BPH and gundhi bug in both the seasons. Spider population regardless of species showed non significant negative correlation with minimum temperature, morning relative humidity, evening relative humidity and rainfall.

There are various methods of pollination, such as wind and insects, in apricot. However, wind is not considered as an effective pollinating agent for apricot because of sticky pollens, and apricot needs insects to carry pollens from stamens to the stigma of another plant. Honeybees are significant floral visitors among other pollinators for the pollination of apricot. The efficacy of pollination by two honey bee species, Apis cerana and Apis mellifera, in apricot under controlled condition was examined in the present study. One hive of each honey bee species was kept in orchard and their effect on the yield of apricot fruit setting was measured. The number of honey bees of these two species and other pollinators foraging on the open branches were also observed regularly during three different timings (i.e. 9.00am, 12.00pm, and 3.00pm) a day. Apis cerana population showed that it was directly proportional to the emergence of flowers and similar phenomenon was observed at the shedding of flowers. Significantly higher fruit yield (81%) in open-pollinated branches than closed-branches (19%) was recorded. Moreover, fruit size and quality was better in open-pollinated branches than closed-branches (covered with muslin cloth). We concluded that A. cerana was more active than A. mellifera during flowering and shedding in apricot. This study will help to manipulate the timings of insecticide spray in apricot orchard because the populations of honey bees and other pollinators will not be affected if spray done in the late evening (18.00pm to 19.00pm).PeerJ Preprints | https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2396v1 | CC BY 4.0 Open Access |