Thumbnail Image

Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa

In the imperial Gazetteer of India 1878, Pusa was recorded as a government estate of about 1350 acres in Darbhanba. It was acquired by East India Company for running a stud farm to supply better breed of horses mainly for the army. Frequent incidence of glanders disease (swelling of glands), mostly affecting the valuable imported bloodstock made the civil veterinary department to shift the entire stock out of Pusa. A British tobacco concern Beg Sutherland & co. got the estate on lease but it also left in 1897 abandoning the government estate of Pusa. Lord Mayo, The Viceroy and Governor General, had been repeatedly trying to get through his proposal for setting up a directorate general of Agriculture that would take care of the soil and its productivity, formulate newer techniques of cultivation, improve the quality of seeds and livestock and also arrange for imparting agricultural education. The government of India had invited a British expert. Dr. J. A. Voelcker who had submitted as report on the development of Indian agriculture. As a follow-up action, three experts in different fields were appointed for the first time during 1885 to 1895 namely, agricultural chemist (Dr. J. W. Leafer), cryptogamic botanist (Dr. R. A. Butler) and entomologist (Dr. H. Maxwell Lefroy) with headquarters at Dehradun (U.P.) in the forest Research Institute complex. Surprisingly, until now Pusa, which was destined to become the centre of agricultural revolution in the country, was lying as before an abandoned government estate. In 1898. Lord Curzon took over as the viceroy. A widely traveled person and an administrator, he salvaged out the earlier proposal and got London’s approval for the appointment of the inspector General of Agriculture to which the first incumbent Mr. J. Mollison (Dy. Director of Agriculture, Bombay) joined in 1901 with headquarters at Nagpur The then government of Bengal had mooted in 1902 a proposal to the centre for setting up a model cattle farm for improving the dilapidated condition of the livestock at Pusa estate where plenty of land, water and feed would be available, and with Mr. Mollison’s support this was accepted in principle. Around Pusa, there were many British planters and also an indigo research centre Dalsing Sarai (near Pusa). Mr. Mollison’s visits to this mini British kingdom and his strong recommendations. In favour of Pusa as the most ideal place for the Bengal government project obviously caught the attention for the viceroy.

Browse

20191
Reset filters
Subject: Statistics × Author: Katiyar, Mohit × End date: 2020 × Thesis Type: M.Sc ×
Reset filters

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Geospatial variability of soil characteristics and their relationship with crop yield in Samastipur district of Bihar
    (Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa, Samastipur (Bihar), 2019) Katiyar, Mohit; Nidhi
    Crop production is a function of three factors, namely, soil, inputs and climatic condition.The soil preparation is the first step to ensure that the field is ready for growing a crop. The quality of soil plays a critical role in enhancing the crop yield. Soil quality is usually assessed in terms of presence of several macronutrients as well as micronutrients. Micronutrients are essential for plant growth and play an important role in balanced crop nutrition. They include boron (B), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), manganese (Mn), molybdenum (Mo), zinc (Zn), nickel (Ni) and chloride (Cl). The knowledge on spatial variability of soil characteristics are expected to serve as a guide for site specific management. Several studies have documented the important role of spatial variability in soil properties in determining the site specific agricultural management strategies. This study is an attempt to assess spatial variability of soil characteristics of Samastipur district. Geo-statistical analysis has been used to study the spatial continuity of soil parameters like pH, electrical conductivity, organic carbon and soil available micronutrients viz., zinc, copper, iron and boron. Spatial variability has been expressed by variogram ̂ which is a plot of the variances of subsequent points in the space vs. distance. It measures the average dissimilarity between data separated by a vector h (Jounel and Huijbregts 1978). Variogram models are used to establish the spatial dependence of all the soil parameters. Based on the variogram model, soil parameters have been interpolated for un-sampled locations using ordinary kriging. Kriging is a spatial interpolation technique which generates a smooth predictive map along with the map representing the variance of prediction. Soil pH value ranged from 6 to 8.9, with a mean 8.1 and median 8.2.pH is observed to have very low CV indicating homogeneous soil with respect to pH across the study region.EC is observed to havemoderate variation across the study area with CV of 77%.The spatial distribution of EC in the study area has the mean value 0.56 dsm-1 and ranges from 0.1 to 3.59dsm-1.EC is highest (3.59 dsm-1) at the Ladaura village in Kalyanpur block.OC is observed to have moderate variability across the study area with CV of 41.07%.Zn exhibited moderate variability (53.19%) across the study area. Rest of micronutrients is observed to be moderate variability across study area.In different classes, 33% of the soil samples have Zn concentration above 1.5 ppm.Almost 90% of the soil samples collected across the study area have Cu concentration more than 1.5 ppm.Iron concentration was observed to be above 11.5 ppm at 36% of the sampled locations.Spherical model has been used to fit the experimental variogram of the soil parameters. pH, Fe and Mn values influenced their neighbouring values over greater distances than EC, OC, Zn and Cu, all of which have range below 20 km.Manganese concentration is revealed to have highest range of 844 km i.e., its concentration is highly correlated spatially up to a large distance.The nugget-sill ratio also proved its strong spatial dependence in the study area. Range of iron concentration is 292 km;however, it exhibits large nugget effect which is a representative of micro-variability in the soil.Due to large nugget effect, its concentration in the study area is observed to have moderate dependence.Soil pH is also observed to be spatially correlated to a large distance of 223 km in the study area.All the other parameters are observed to have low values of range varying between 5 km to 16 km.The predictive maps ofkriged surface produced by interpolating the values using ordinary kriging show distinct patchy distributions of Zn, Cu and Mn across different parts of Samastipur.70 % of farmers reported to have upland, whereas 52.5% farmers and 42.5 % of farmers are having midland and upland respectively. Farmers follow rice+wheat, rice+maize+potatoand rice+vegetable cropping pattern in their field.The average yield for cereal is reported to be approximately 79.68 qha-1 and the average yield of vegetables is 94.02 qha-1 observed in both seasons. Principal component analysis yielded two principal components that explained 68% of variation in the entire set of variables. These two principal components have been used in regression model to establish the relationship between yield and soil parameters for each of the three topographies.For low land and mid-land, the second principal component (high loading with OC, pH and Zn) is observed to have higher contribution towards explaining REY. For upland, first principal component having high loadings with EC, Cu, Fe and Mn is observed to have significant role in explaining the variability in REY. Based on these principal components, soil quality index can be developed for different topographies. Thus the study demonstrated that influence of soil properties on variability of crop yield depends on the micronutrient concentration as well as varying topography. Key words: geospatial variability, variogram, kriging, spatial interpolation