January 2014

Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) in the light of biotechnological approaches: A review

Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) is a sterile triploid plant belonging to the Iridaceae (Liliales, Monocots). Saffron is a spice derived from the flower and has for decades been the world's most expensive spice. Saffron is propagated by corms as the flowers are sterile and fail to produce viable seeds. A corm survives for only one season, producing up to ten "cormlets" that eventually give rise to new plants....

Author(s): Ahmad, Mushtaq, Zaffar, Gul, Habib, Mehfuza,  Arshid, Ameeque, Dar,  N. A. and Dar, Z. A. 

January 2014

Analysing social attributes of loan default among small Indian dairy farms: A discriminant approach

The study examines the socio-economic factors discriminating defaulters and non-defaulters of credit repayment. Multi-stage sampling design was adopted for selection of farm respondents. The data were collected through structured questionnaire by personal interview method. A linear discriminant function considered to examine the relative importance of different factors in discriminating between non-defaulters and...

Author(s): Sinha, Mukesh Kumar, Dhaka, J. P. and Mondal, Biswajit

January 2014

Evolution characteristics and driving forces of wetland changes in the Poyang Lake eco-economic zone of China

Wetland ecosystem is known as the “kidney” of earth and the “gene pool” of species. It has the functions of regulating climate, flood storage and degradation of pollution. In this paper, based on GIS technology and landscape ecology, wetland changes and its driving forces in the Poyang Lake Eco-economic Zone of China are analyzed. The analysis of landscape pattern demonstrates that there is an...

Author(s): Xie, Hualin, Liu, Qu and Liu, Guiying

January 2014

Development of UV digestion unit for natural rubber latex preparation before the determination of phosphorus residue with artificial neural network-digital image-based colorimetry

Digital image–based colorimetry (DIC) coupled with artificial neural network (ANN) was studied for the determination of phosphorus in natural rubber (NR) latex. The method is based on the RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) value of an image of phosphorus standard solution reacted with molybdenum blue solution. The picture of the complex solution was captured by using a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS)...

Author(s): Masawat, Prinya, Panwong, Benyanan and Udnan, Yuthapong