Agricultural Extension Reforms in South Asia: Status, Challenges, and Policy Options is based on agricultural extension reforms across five South Asian countries, reflecting past experiences, case studies and experiments. Beginning with an overview of historical trends and recent developments, the book then delves into country-wise reform trajectories and presents several cases testing the effectiveness of different types (public and private) and forms (nutrition extension, livestock extension) of extension systems. Further, the book provides a comprehensive overview of challenges and constraints faced in formulating and implementing reforms, tying the results into a concrete set of lessons and highlighting areas that require further research. In addition, the book discusses how a major aspect of agricultural development is the productivity increase from the knowledge base of farmers, and how translating research results into a knowledge base for farmers requires designing and implementing well-functioning extension programs.

This collection features three peer-reviewed literature reviews on pesticide residues in agriculture. The first chapter outlines the ways in which pesticide use can lead to increased pest problems, such as pest resurgence and replacement, and the development of pesticide resistance. The chapter examines current strategies for mitigating the impacts of pesticides and refers to a detailed case study on the diamondback moth (DBM) to demonstrate the practical application of these strategies. The second chapter explores the threat of pesticide poisoning to human health, either via deliberate self-poisoning or via occupational exposure. It discusses how best to monitor exposure to pesticides, as well as how to minimize the human health risks that may arise as a result of their use/exposure. The authors refer to a case study on smallholder cotton farmers in the Republic of Benin to emphasise the global pesticide poisoning crisis. The final chapter reviews the environmental impacts of pesticide use in agriculture, focussing on their contribution to global human and ecological health issues. It provides an overview of how pesticides are currently addressed in emission inventory and impact assessment, and discusses the relevance of spatiotemporal variability in modelling emissions and the toxicity and ecotoxicity impacts of pesticides.

The Solar Corridor Crop System: Implementation and Impacts presents a case-study format on the planning and implementation of alternative cropping systems designed to maximize incident sunlight and bio-support of all crops in a rotation system. The book describes the basic component of the system, an increased access point of incident sunlight between each row or pairs of rows that enables a more uniform vertical distribution of incident sunlight to chloroplasts within the entire corn leaf canopy. While the production environment and environment specific genetics determine the performance potential of this principle, by maximizing the principles that light is basic to crop yield, a solar corridor ultimately contributes to increased grain yield. Written by experts who were integral in the development of solar corridor systems, and providing real-world examples of the methods, challenges and future prospects, this book will be valuable for those seeking to increase yield-per-acre through both primary and cover-crops.

Alternative Swine Management Systems examines technologically humane substitutions for swine production, focusing specifically on hoop structure systems. Benefits of these alternatives include enhanced animal welfare and reduced capital cost. From small holders involved in low input pig farms, to larger commercial operations, this book instructs users on new technology to improve the quality of animal production, animal welfare and environmental protection points.

Safety and Practice for Organic Food covers current food safety issues and trends. It provides detailed information on all organic and pasture practices including produce-only, farm-animal-only or integrated crop-livestock farming, as well as the impact of these practices on food safety and foodborne infections. The book explores food products that organic, integrated and traditional farming systems are contributing to consumers. As the demand for organic food products grows faster than ever, this book discusses current and improved practices for safer products. Moreover, the book explores progressive directions, such as the application of next-generation sequencing and genomics to aid in the understanding of the microbial ecology of the agro-environment and how farmer education can contribute to sustainable and safe food. Safety and Practice for Organic Food is a unique source of organic agricultural practices and food production for researchers, academics and professionals at agriculture-based universities and colleges who are involved in food science, animal sciences including poultry science, food safety, food microbiology, plant science and agricultural extension. This book is also an excellent source of information for regulators and federal government officials (USDA, FDA, EPA) and the food processing industry.

Advances in Agronomy, Volume 156, continues to be recognized as a leading reference and first-rate source for the latest research in agronomy. Each volume contains an eclectic group of reviews by leading scientists throughout the world. As always, the subjects covered are rich, varied, and exemplary of the abundant subject matter addressed by this long-running serial.

The increasing demand for food as well as changes in consumption habits have led to the greater availability and variety of food with a longer shelf life. However, these items, when not properly preserved, can lead to severe food-borne illnesses that can be fatal. Thus, countless studies are now geared towards the processing, distributing, and safe storage of foods. Novel Technologies and Systems for Food Preservation is an essential reference source that discusses novel and emerging cooling and heating technologies, processes, and systems for food preservation, as well as improvements for control and monitoring systems that aim to foster energy efficiency, equipment safety, and performance. Additionally, it looks at concepts that may be useful for the development of new policies and legislation concerning food preservation. Featuring research on topics such as energy efficiency, food quality, and legislation policies, this book is ideally designed for government officials, policymakers, food and service industry professionals, food safety inspectors, researchers, academicians, and students.

This book comprises of six sections giving the state of the art information in the following topics: Functional foods: Scope, Market Opportunities and Recent trends, Functional food products: Ingredients and Functionality, Functional food products: Formulation and Processing Technology, Functional food products: Packaging and Storage Stability, Functional food products: Prevention, Disease Control and bioavailability, Future prospects of functional food. The book is exclusively targeted for food scientists and technologists, and scientists working in related fields. The book also presents practical information for use in functional food product development. It is also intended for use by practitioners in functional food companies and food technology centres and will also be of interest to researchers and students of food science and technology. With recent scientific studies, this book provides readers with a comprehensive and up-to-date scientific knowledge about the functional food science and technology. The book presents a most updated knowledge on the regulatory status of functional food in different countries. This information, which is seldom available, is essential for the commercial aspect of functional food. Also, core discussion on the reliable and economical scale up of laboratory-based extraction and purification techniques for different functional ingredients is also presented in the detailed manner in the book. A critical issue in the development of functional foods is health aspects and its role in disease control. In section V, Functional food products: Prevention, Disease Control and bioavailability, a variety of examples are discussed indicating the role and action of functional ingredients in preventing disease. The present book also addresses the key issue of processing and its effects on the bioavailability of bioactives. With the advent of the latest scientific technique in the latter half of the 20th century, area of functional food has evolved to the current state of the art.

Climate Change and Agricultural Ecosystems explains the causative factors of climate change related to agriculture, soil and plants, and discusses the relevant resulting mitigation process. Agricultural ecosystems include factors from the surrounding areas where agriculture experiences direct or indirect interaction with the plants, animals, and microbes present. Changes in climatic conditions influence all the factors of agricultural ecosystems, which can potentially adversely affect their productivity. This book summarizes the different aspects of vulnerability, adaptation, and amelioration of climate change in respect to plants, crops, soil, and microbes for the sustainability of the agricultural sector and, ultimately, food security for the future. It also focuses on the utilization of information technology for the sustainability of the agricultural sector along with the capacity and adaptability of agricultural societies under climate change. Climate Change and Agricultural Ecosystems incorporates both theoretical and practical aspects, and serves as base line information for future research. This book is a valuable resource for those working in environmental sciences, soil sciences, agricultural microbiology, plant pathology, and agronomy.

The authors, as geologists, were endowed with the fortune of working in Geomatics technology comprising Remote Sensing, GIS, GPS, etc. with a focused vision to bring out the Quaternary geological history of different parts of Indian Peninsular, the senior author during the last four decades and the co-authors during the last one and half decades. As geomorphology, one of the major branch of geology, not only dealing with external landscape architecture of the planet earth but also bears the records on the Quaternary tectonics, riverine, coastal, aeolian, glacial, volcanic and other geomorphic processes of the Quaternary period, the authors were stimulated to carry out studies on the riverine life histories, shoreline changes and offshore land building phenomena, the recent earth movements from the geomorphic anomalies, Holocene tectonics and their control over Quaternary deltas, etc. Besides unfurling the geological history of the Quaternary period, geomorphology has been deeply studied by the authors with the focus on mapping and mitigation of natural disasters like seismotectonics, landslides, response of coastal geomorphology to tsunami surges, floods, etc.

The term gender is a buzz word among rural development professionals now days. Gender mainstreaming finds its way into various plans and programmes erected by national as well as state government. Many organizations made the gender related training programmes compulsory in their training agenda. The research scholars need the secondary data for forming the base for gender related studies. Keeping this in mind the authors have tried to put forth some related literature from various notes and references to formulate a book on gender mainstreaming in farm sector. 1. Status of Farm Women and Empowerment 2. Gender Issues in Agriculture 3. Mainstreaming Gender Through SHG 4. Rural Women and Empowerment