STRATEGIES
FOR ENHANCEMENT IN FOOD PRODUCTION
ANIMAL
HUSBANDRY:
·
The
agricultural practice of breeding and raising livestock.
·
Deals
with care and breeding of livestock like buffaloes, cows, pigs, horses, cattle,
sheep, camels, goats etc.
·
Extended
form includes poultry farming and fisheries.
·
Fisheries
include rearing, catching selling etc. of fish, mollusks (shell fish) and
crustaceans (prawns, crabs etc.)
Dairy farm
management:
·
Dairying
is the management of animals for milk and its products.
·
Use
of improved breed of cow such as Jersey.
·
Well
housed.
·
Should
have adequate water
·
Maintained
disease free
·
Feeding
should be scientific manner.
·
Quantity
and quality of fodder
·
Stringent
cleanliness and hygiene.
·
Regular
visit by a veterinary doctor would be mandatory.
Poultry
farm management:
·
Poultry
is the class of domesticated fowl (birds) used for food and eggs.
·
Selection
of disease free and suitable breeds.
·
The
improved breed of poultry is Leghorn.
·
Proper
and safe farm conditions
·
Proper
feed and water
·
Hygiene
and health care.
Animal
breeding:
·
A
group of animals related by descent and similar in most characters like general
appearance, features size, configuration, etc., are said to be a breed.
·
Inbreeding: crosses between same breed.
·
Outbreeding: crosses between different breeds.
Inbreeding:
·
Mating
of more closely related individuals within the same breed for 4-6 generations.
·
Superior
male and female is identified and mated in pairs.
·
Progeny
obtained are evaluated and superior males and females among them are identified
for further mating.
·
More
milk per lactation
is the criteria for superior female for cow and buffalo. Superior male which
gives rise to superior progeny.
·
Inbreeding
increases homozygosity.
·
Inbreeding
is necessary to create pure line in any animal.
·
Inbreeding
exposes harmful recessive gene that are eliminated by selection.
·
Helpful
in accumulation of superior genes.
·
Continuous
inbreeding reduces fertility and even productivity. This is called inbreeding
depression.
Outbreeding:
·
Out-breeding
is the breeding of unrelated animals.
Out-crossing:
·
Mating
of animals within the same breed but having no common ancestor on either side
of their pedigree upto 4-6 generations.
·
Offsprings
of such mating is called out-cross.
·
A
single outcross often helps to overcome inbreeding depression.
Cross-breeding:
·
Superior
male of one breed are mated with superior female of another breed.
·
It
allows the desirable qualities of two different breeds to be combined.
·
Hisardaleis a new breed of sheep developed in
Punjab by crossing Bikaneri ewes and Marino rams.
Interspecific
hybridization:
·
Male
and female of two different species are mated.
·
The
progeny may combine desirable features of both the parents.(mule)
Artificial
insemination:
·
Controlled
breeding experiments
are carried out using artificial insemination.
·
The
semen is collected from the male and injected into the reproductive tract of
the selected female by the breeder.
·
The
semen collected may be used immediately or can be frozen for later use. The
semen can be transported in a frozen form to where the female is housed.
Multiple
Ovulation Embryo Transfer Technology:
·
It
is used to improve chances of successful production of hybrids.
·
Cow
is administered hormones with FSH-like activity
·
induce
follicular maturation and super ovulation
·
Production
of 6-8 eggs instead of one egg per cycle.
·
The
female is either mated with an elite bull or artificially inseminated.
·
Non-surgical
recovery of fertilized eggs at 8-32 cells stages.
·
Each
one transferred to surrogate mother.
·
The
genetic mother is available for another round of super ovulation.
·
This
technology is used to increase herd size in a short time.
Bee –
keeping:
·
Bee-keeping
is called apiculture.
·
It
includes maintenance of hives of honeybees for production of honey.
·
Honey
is a food of high nutritive values and also used as medicine.
·
Honey
bees also produce beeswax which has many used in industry, like preparation of
cosmetics and polishes of various kinds.
·
Bee-keeping
practiced in area with sufficient bee pastures of some wild shrubs, fruit
orchards and cultivated crops.
·
Apis
indica is most common species used in
apiculture.
·
The
following points are important for successful bee-keeping:
o
Knowledge
of the nature and habits of bees.
o
Selection
of suitable location for keeping the beehives.
o
Catching
and hiving of swarms (group of bees)
o
Management
of beehives during different seasons.
o
Handling
and collection of honey and of beeswax.
o
Bees
are the pollinator for many plants, hence keeping beehives in crop fields
during flowering period, increases pollination and improve honey yield.
Fisheries:
- Fishery industry related to
catching, processing or selling of fish shellfish or other aquatic
animals.
- Common fresh water fish:
Catla, Rohu and common carp.
Common marine fishes: Hilsa,
Sardines, Mackerel and Pomfrets.
- Production of aquatic plants
and animals, both freshwater and marine water is increased by Pisciculture
and aquaculture.
- Increasing production of the
fish is called Blue revolution.
PLANT
BREEDING:
- Plant breeding as a technology
has helped increase yields to a large extent.
- Green revolution was not only responsible to
meet the national requirement of food, but also helped us even to export
it.
- Green revolution is due to
plant breeding techniques which developed high yielding variety of wheat,
rice, maize etc.
What is
plant breeding?
- Plant breeding is the
purposeful manipulation of plant species in order to create desired plant
types that are better suited for cultivation, give better yields and are
disease resistant.
- Classical plant breeding
involved crossing or hybridization of pure lines followed by artificial
selection to produce plants with desirable traits of higher yield,
nutrition and resistance to diseases.
Trait for
which plant breeding done:
- Trait or characters that the
breeders have tried to incorporated into the plants are as follows:
- Increased crop yield
- Improve quality
- Increased tolerance to
environmental stresses (salinity, extreme temperature, and drought).
- Resistant to pathogens (
viruses, fungi, and bacteria)
- Increase tolerance to insect
pest.
Steps in
plant breeding techniques:
- Collection of variability:
- Genetic variability is the
root of any breeding programme.
- Pre-existing genetic
variability is available from wild relatives of crop.
- Collection and preservation of
all the different wild varieties, species and relatives of the cultivated
species.
- Evaluation for their
characteristics.
- The entire collection (of
plants /seeds) having all the diverse alleles for all genes in a given
crop is called germplasm collection.
- Evaluation and selection of
parents:
- The germplasm is evaluated so
as to identify plants with desirable combination of characters.
- The selected plants are
multiplied and used in hybridization.
- Pure line is created wherever
desirable and possible.
- Cross hybridization among the
selected parents:
- Cross hybridization of two
selected parent by emasculation and bagging, to produce hybrid of
combined character of both parents.
- For example high protein
quality of one parent may need to be combined with disease resistance
from another patent.
- Usually one in few hundred to
a thousand crosses offsprings shows desirable combinations.
- Selection and testing of
superior recombinants:
- Selection is done from the
progeny of hybrids produced by cross hybridization.
- It requires careful scientific
observations and evaluation of progeny.
- Hybrid plants that are
superior to both of the parents are selected.
- These hybrids are
self-pollinated for several generations till they reach a state of
uniformity (homozygosity).
- Testing, release and
commercialization of new cultivars:
- Selected pure lines are
evaluated for their yield and other agronomic traits of quality, disease
resistance etc.
- This evaluation is done in the
research fields and recording their performance under ideal fertilizer,
irrigation
- Testing is done in the farmers
‘fields’ at least for three generation.
- The material is compared with
best available local crop cultivar.
Product:
Wheat and Rice:-
- Production of wheat and rice
increased in many folds due to semi-dwarf variety during the
period of 1960-2000.
- Nobel laureate Norman
E.Borlaug, at international centre for wheat and Maize improvement in
Mexico, developed semi-dwarf variety of wheat.
- In 1963 several varieties such Sonalika
and Kalyan Sona high yielding variety was introduced in India.
- Semi-dwarf rice was derived
from IR-8(developed at International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)
Philippines) and Taichung Native –I (from Taiwan).
- Jaya and Ratna, semi
dwarf rice variety developed in India.
Product:
sugarcane:
- Saccharum barberi of north India with poor sugar
content and yield crossed with Saccharum officinarum with
thick stems and higher sugar content to produce sugar cane of high yield,
thick stems, and high sugar.
Plant
breeding for Disease Resistance:
- A wide range of fungal,
bacterial and viral pathogens, affects the yield of cultivated crop
species, they lessens he yield upto 20-30 % sometime total.
- Development of cultivars
resistant to diseases is essential.
- This also reduce he dependence
on the fungicide or insecticide.
- Pathogen causing different
diseases in plants:
- Fungi: brown rust of wheat, red rot
of sugarcane, late blight of potato.
- Bacteria: black rot of crucifer,
- Virus: tobacco mosaic, turnip mosaic
etc.
Method of
breeding for disease resistant:
- Screening of germplasm for
resistance sources.
- Hybridization of selected
parent.
- Selection and evaluation of
hybrids
- Testing and release of new
varieties.
Mutation
breeding:
- Genetic variability is created
by induced mutation. (By application of mutagen, chemical or physical).
- Screening and selection of the
parent with desirable character used as a parental plant for breeding
programme.
- In mung bean, resistance to
yellow mosaic virus and powdery mildew were induced by mutation.
- Natural wild varieties of plant
with disease resistant genes are available but low yield.
- These wild varieties are
hybridized with high yield varieties to make them disease resistant and
also high yielding variety.
- Resistance to yellow mosaic
virus in bhindi (Abelmoschus esculentus) was transferred from a
wild species and resulted a new variety of A.esculentus called Parbhani
kranti.
Plant
breeding for Developing Resistant to insect pest:
- Another major cause of large
scale destruction of crop plants is the insect and pest infestation.
- Insect resistance in host crop
is due to morphological, biochemical or physiological characteristics.
Characters
that make the plant resistance to insect pest:
- Hairy leaves in several plants make them
resistant to insect pest.
- Solid stem in wheat lead to
non-preference by stem sawfly.
- Smooth leaves and nectar-less cotton
variety do not attract bollworms.
- High aspartic acid, low nitrogen and sugar
content in maize make them resistant to stem borers.
- Steps for developing insect
pest resistant variety of crop are same as others.
- The resistant variety selected
either form the wild variety of from other available cultivars.
Plant
breeding for Improved Food quality:
- Around three billion people
suffer from micronutrient, protein and vitamin deficiencies called Hidden
hunger.
- Diets lacking essential
micronutrients particularly iron, vitamin A, iodine or zinc- increase the
risk of diseases; reduce life span, reduce mental ability.
- Biofortification:-breeding crops with higher
levels of vitamins and minerals or higher protein and healthier fats – is
the most practical means to improve public health,
- Objectives of biofortification:
is to improve
- Protein content and quality.
- Oil content and quality
- Vitamin content and
- Micronutrient and mineral
content.
- Hybrid maize developed with
twice the amount of amino acids lysine and tryptophan,
compared with existing maize.
- Wheat variety Atlas 66, having
high protein content has been used as donor for improving cultivated
wheat.
- Iron fortified rice developed with five times
more iron than existing variety.
- IARI New Delhi developed:
- Vitamin A enriched carrots,
spinach pumpkin.
- Vitamin C enriched bitter
gourd, bathua mustard tomato.
- Iron and Calcium enriched
spinach and bathua
- Protein enriched beans- broad,
lablab, French and garden peas.
SINGLE
CELL PROTEIN (SCP):
- More that 25% of human
population is suffering from hunger and malnutrition.
- One of the alternating sources
of proteins for animal and human is SCP.
- Production of biomass (protein)
in large scale using micro-organism and low cost raw material is called single
cell proteins.
- Microbes like Spirulina
grown on waste water from potato processing plants, straw, molasses,
animal manure and even sewage, to produce large quantities of biomass with
rich in protein, mineral, fats, carbohydrate and vitamins.
- It has been calculated that 250
kg cow produces 200gm of protein per day. In the same period 250gm of
micro-organism like Methylophilus methylotophus, expected to
produce 25 tones of protein.
- Another example is production
of biomass like mushroom from straw.
TISSUE
CULTURE:
- Potency or power or ability of
a single cell/ explants to develop a whole plant is called totipotency.
- This property led the scientist
able to develop whole plant from explants – any part of plant, cell
grown in a test tube, under sterile condition in special nutrient medium.
- The nutrient medium provides a
carbon source such as sucrose. Inorganic salts, vitamins amino acids and
growth regulator like auxin, cytokinin.
- The method of production of
thousands of plants through tissue culture is called micropropagation.
- Plants grown by
micropropagation are genetically identical called somaclones.
Application
of tissue culture:
- Production of large number of
plant from small tissue or single cell.
- Production of genetically
identical plants (somaclones)
- Recovery of healthy plants from
diseased plants by meristem culture. Although the plant infected
with virus, the meristem is free of virus.
Somatic
hybridization:
- Isolation of single cells from
the plants.
- Digestion of cell wall to get
protoplast of different donor cells, by use of cellulase and pectinase.
- Two protoplast of two different
plants with desirable character are fused to form hybrid protoplast,
either by using electric field or by PEG (polyethylene glycol).
- These hybrids are called somatic
hybrid and the process called somatic hybridization. E.g.
production pomato plant from potato and tomato.
Abbreviation:
- ET
: Embryo
Transfer
- IARI
: Indian
Agricultural Research Institute
- IRRI
: International Rice
Research Institute
- ICAR
: Indian Council of
Agriculture Research
- MOET :
Multiple Ovulation Embryo Transfer
- NDRI :
National Dairy Research Institute
