V. Sangeetha

Constraints Experienced by Agricultural Scientists and Extension Personnel in Rice Knowledge Management and its Delivery

Rice being staple crop, cultivated in almost all over India. In order to provide probable solution about rice cultivation to all the stakeholders, the Indian Institute of Rice Research, Hyderabad launched Rice Knowledge Management Portal (RKMP). The present study was undertaken with an objective to analyse the constraints experienced by agricultural scientists and extension personnel in rice knowledge management and its delivery. The results showed that agricultural scientists and extension personnel faced technological, social, economical and psychological constraints more severely. Under the technological constraints, lack of updated information and technical and Infrastructure problems while using information and communication technologies (ICTs), poor maintenance of ICT tools were major constraints. In case of social constraints, restriction to promote organization information followed by less networking among extension personnel found to be most limiting factor for using portal information. In case of psychological factors, beneits given to particular group of people was found most severe and techno-phobia was found least affecting to respondents for utilizing information. In case of economic constraints, high cost of internet and cost of computer/smart phones were limiting the use of information provided by RKMP. These indings will help in restructuring and necessary modiications for reaching the unreach for information dissemination and making portal more effective for users to ensure timely and relevant information.

Institutional innovations in technology transfer- Mobile agro advisory services and its impact in adopting improved cultivation practices

The rising spread of mobile phone shows it’s potential as a source of information for providing farmers the timely and right information which enable him to respond to different types of risk, market incentives and competition more efficiently. The hypothesis of this study is that providing information about improved cultivation practices through mobile phones may accelerate the process of adoption of new technologies by the farmers. In order to provide agro advisory services through mobile phones, fifty five farmers from two villages under the project “Cyber Extension Model for Agricultural Development: An Action Research” i.e. Sidhauli and Kasmanda blocks of Sitapur district of Uttar Pradesh was selected purposively. In selecting the sample for this research, mobile phone ownership was kept in mind. To strengthen the information base of the farmers, Short Message Service (SMS) regarding improved cultivation practices of wheat and mustard crops were sent to the farmers. This study shows that majority of the farmers agreed that mobile phone is the best instrument to get timely information (87.0%); to increase the access of information (87.0%); to overcome physical barriers (82.0%). Although, mobile phones play an important role in accessing the information about improved cultivation practices, the farm resources such as inputs, labour, machinery, seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, energy, storage facilities, irrigation and affordability by the farmers may become a serious constraint in adopting any particular technology. This study also reveals that permanency of the information and overcoming the illiteracy by SMS and voice calls respectively is equally preferred by the farmers. Both technologies has to be used depending upon the nature of information and literacy level of the farmers.

Relationship between Food Production and Consumption Diversity in India – Empirical Evidences from Cross Section Analysis

This study has examined (i) the food production and consumption diversity across the states, (ii) trends in food consumption and nutritional intake and changes in related socio-economic characteristics, and (iii) relationship between consumption diversity and production diversity along with other major determinants. The data on production, consumption, and other socio-economic factors have been collected from various government published sources for the past two decades (1990–2010). The study has revealed that per-capita consumption has decreased in cereals and is stagnant in pulses, and has doubled in edible oils, vegetables, eggs, fish and meat during 1993–94 to 2011–12. It has reflected the nutritional intake wherein calorie and protein intake has declined, fat intake has increased during this period. Simultaneously, a significant growth has been observed in per-capita income and availability of food commodities along with rapid urbanization. The multivariate regression analysis of 28 states has suggested that dietary diversity significantly increases with production diversity and per-capita income and is significantly higher in other states vis-a-vis north-eastern states. A significant non-linear relationship has been observed between dietary diversity and literacy. The study has highlighted a significant impact of local production diversity on consumption pattern and therefore, policies should target the diversification of agricultural production, particularly in the north-eastern states to bring out dietary diversity and desired nutritional outcome.

ZIDS: Zonal-based Intrusion Detection System for studying the malicious node behaviour in MANET

The communication behaviour of mobile nodes in adhoc network are quite confusing to understand owing to the decentralized architecture and dynamic topology. The existing system has presented various security solutions in order to understand the malicious activity of the adversary. Therefore, designing a model to strengthen up the intrusion detection system based on the uncertain and unpredictable malicious behaviour of the adversary is computationally challenging problem. This paper presents a technique called as ZIDS i.e. Zonal-based Intrusion Detection System that uses potential of game theory in order to extracts the uncertain strategies of the malicious node. ZIDS offers an extensive security against multiple and discrete attacker. Compared with the recent studies, ZIDS excels best with respect to accuracy in detection rate and processing time for ensuring accurate detection of malicious nodes and events.