Small ruminants, especially goats contribute meat, milk, fiber and other functions that are significant to the productivity, stability and sustenance of many farming systems. Goat keeping in tropical countries is undergoing a transformation from the traditional extensive browse-based feeding system to intensive stall feeding system mainly because of intensification of agriculture, shrinkage of grazing lands and reclamation of fallow lands for alternate use. Hence, cereal straws are increasingly being used as basal feeds for goats in the arable areas of the tropics. The World Health...

Wood decay is a deterioration of wood by primarily enzymatic activities of microorganisms. For practical purposes, fungi are the only agents of wood decay. Fungi which grow on wood are sometimes called "lignicolous" fungi. But why develop a set of keys limited to fungi utilizing wood as a substrate? After all, being lignicolous does not define a taxonomic category. Lignicolous fungi include ascomycetes and basidiomycetes and a large number of classes and orders within each of these groups. Most of these taxa include both lignicolous and terrestrial species. Rather than taxonomy, the keys...

Irrigation water is one of the most critical but scare resources for agriculture production in arid and semi-arid regions of India. Bharata has been blessed with two major natural resources, relatively productive land and good reservoir of water resources. Soils of the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP), by and large, have been obsessed with high productivity and even today this alluvial plain constitutes country's granary. Keeping the mandate of the experiment initial at Crop Research Station, Nawabgang, Kanpur, it was concluded that the Soil application (SA) of gypsum (50% GR) + gypsum bed (15 cm)...