Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have always mattered in agriculture too. In day-to-day practices of agriculture and allied sectors, the farmers often share their information. Changing weather patterns, soil conditions, pests and diseases always throw challenges to small and marginal farmers. So, the farmer needs up-dated information to cope with and even benefit from these changes. In the developing countries like India, where agriculture still plays a crucial role (over 58% of the rural households depend on agriculture as their livelihood) and the rising population from 1027 million to 1419 million during 2001-16 (a total rise of 38 percent or 1.3 percent per year) pose a lot of pressure on land and other resources to meet the food security needs on one hand and to meet the challenges of globalization on the other. Understanding and addressing these challenges are very crucial, in which ICT can play a major role. With the booming mobile, wireless, and Internet industries, ICT has found a foothold even in poor marginal and smallholder farms and in their activities. The survey conducted among the 120 farmers in Srikakulam district in India revealed that, ICT has revolutionized the agriculture in the modern days. Production and marketing information is accessed by 91% of the sample farmers through mobile in 2015, where it was only 5% in 2005. The extent of use of mobile phones by the farmers varied with the decision to be taken by them like Harvesting, packing, and storing (94%), Selling Decision (91%), Seed purchase (89%), Application of fertilizers and pesticides (88%) and Land preparation and planting (84%), other package of practices (77%). The farmers further opined that, ‘Voice’ was the dominating source of communication (96%) compared to Short Message Service (SMS) (only 27%) and Internet access (10%), as majority are illiterate. The use of camera (71%), Bluetooth (33%), Radio (61%) TV (41%) are the other means of sharing the information. In this context of importance of ICTs in Indian agriculture, greater attention justifies about the applications of ICT’s to alleviate poverty and promote economic growth of the farming population.
We tested differences in female pheromone production and male response in three species of the genus Adoxophyes in Korea. Females of all three species produced mixtures of Z9-14:OAc and Z11-14:OAc as major components but in quite different ratios. The ratio of Z9-14:OAc and Z11-14:OAc in pheromone gland extracts was estimated to be 100:198 for A. honmai, 100:23 for A. orana, and 100:3880 for A. sp. Field tests showed that males of each species were preferentially attracted to the two-component blends of Z9-14:OAc and Z11-14:OAc mimicking the blends found in pheromone gland extracts of conspecific females. The effects of minor components identified in gland extracts on trap catches varied with species. Addition of 10me-12:OAc or E11-14:OAc to the binary blend of Z9-14:OAc and Z11-14:OAc significantly increased captures of A. honmai males, whereas E11-14:OAc exhibited a strongly antagonistic effect on catches of A. sp. males. Moreover, Z9-14:OH or Z11-14:OH added to the binary blends increased attraction of male A. orana but not A. honmai and A. sp. males, suggesting that these minor components, in addition to the relative ratios of the two major components, play a noteworthy role in reproductive isolation between Adoxophyes species in the southern and midwestern Korea where these species occur sympatrically.
This paper deals with a first-come, first-served qucueing model to analyze the behavior of heterogeneous finite source system with a single server. Each sources and the processor are assumed to operate in independently Markovian environments, respectively