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Aromatic rice (Oryza sativa L. Indica) is popular among consumers. They provide significant economic benefit to producing countries as well as farmers. Aromatic germplasm is huge and diverse in terms of agro-morphological characters, grain types and aroma content. Development of a representative coreset of aromatic germplasm can be a good source for novel alleles identification and is required for its improvement. A collection of 552 aromatic accessions were screened for 40 DUS traits and 60 SSR markers. The data were processed in PowerCore software that implements the advanced M (or maximization) strategy using a modified heuristic algorithm and a coreset of 99 accessions was identified. The average Nei diversity and Shannon–Weaver diversity indices of the coreset were 0.635 and 0.823, representing the entire diversity of the collection. Statistical parameters like mean difference and variance difference were analysed to compare the mean and variance ratio between core and entire collections. Coreset has 3.45% mean difference and 14.4% variance difference. The coreset has 99.04% coincidence rate and 106.31% variable range which indicated the optimum properties of the coreset against the entire collection. This is the first attempt of making coreset of aromatic rice from larger germplasm.

Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) is an economically important fruit crop of tropical and subtropical regions of the world. There has been enormous increase in area, production, and export worldwide...

Out of various species of Ziziphus, there are three, namely Z. mauritiana Lam., Z. rotundifolia Lam. and Z. nummularia (Burm. f.) wt., that are most abundantly occurring species in drier part of India. Z. mauritiana has socio-economic importance in the rural life of the local people being part of each and every farming system supplying food, fuel, fodder, fencing and nutritious fresh as well as value added products. Z. nummularia is an excellent top feed species producing nutritious leaves locally called ‘Pala’ serve as good source of fodder for desert livestock such as sheep, goat, camel and cattle. Z. rotundifolia have much value as timber however its importance lies as rootstock for vegetative propagation and played an important role in commercialization of cultivated Z. mauritiana. These species have tremendous potential for improvement and utilization as commercial crop of arid regions. The paper is an attempt to synthesize available information on Ziziphus species, their distribution, botanical description, nutritional and medicinal value, and experimental findings on genotypic diversity, adaptability under progressive drought situation, mass multiplication method, pruning, system based production and rejuvenation of unproductive trees. These information and research findings on improvement, production and utilization of jujube would create a strong commercial opportunities in arid and semi arid regions.

Optimal plant spacing and fertigation are the two management factors that influence yield, nutrient use efficiency and water productivity (WP) of any crop. In this context, a two year field experiment was conducted to standardize the planting geometry and fertigation practices for drip irrigated chilli in the hot-sub humid region of India. The study evaluated the effects of four planting geometries (sub-plots) with spacing of 75 × 50 (S1), 70 × 40 (S2), 50 × 40 (S3) and 30 × 40 (S4) cm in combination with three fertigation patterns having varying fertigation dose with increasing weeks after transplant (WAT) (main-plots), viz. uniform dose (FP1), higher dose during early reproductive stage (8th–13th WAT) (FP2) and higher dose during late reproductive stage (12th–18th WAT) (FP3) on chilli growth, yield and WP. Fertigation patterns and planting arrangements significantly influenced the number of fruits per plant, nitrogen recovery and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE). The fertigation pattern FP2 in combination with denser planting geometries (S3 and S4) had highest N recovery of 69.2 and 68.6%; NUE of 132.6 and 141.3 kg kg−1 N, respectively. The highest N, P and K uptake by chilli pepper was 105.9, 15.3 and 124 kg ha−1 in the denser plant populations (S4) with the treatment combinations of FP2-S4, FP3-S4 and FP3-S4, respectively. The chilli yield per plant decreased, while chilli yield per unit area increased gradually with increase in plant population. Highest chilli yield (14.5 t ha−1) and WP (31.1 kg ha−1 mm−1) was obtained when higher fertilizer dose was applied during early reproductive stage under S4 geometry (FP2-S4). Planting at 40 × 30 cm in triangular geometry (S4) with application of higher fertigation dose (FP2) during early reproductive stage is recommended for drip fertigation of chilli pepper in hot and sub-humid climate.

Bael is a medicinal cum fruit tree with multipurpose utility and propagated mostly through seeds. It is mostly found in India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Thailand and China. Focus on collection of bael variability has increased in recent times with an aim towards their utilization as fresh or made into ‘Sharbat’, one of the most popular drinks in the Indian. Its lots of evidence have showed immense potential of nutritional and medicinal properties used in various ethnic societies. The present investigation was carried out to exploit genetic variability in bael fruits. Seventy-five genotypes were characterized for sixteen fruit traits viz. fruit weight, fruit length, fruit width, skin weight, no. of seed, seed weight, pulp weight, skin per cent, seed per cent, pulp per cent, skin thickness, fruit volume, TSS, acidity, reducing sugar and total sugars during 2015. Observations of growing seedling trees showed rich genetic variations regarding their fruit characteristics. The fruit characteristics, viz., fruit weight ranged from (315.20–1608.65 g), fruit length (81.39–173.43 mm), fruit width (89.76–136.35 mm), skin weight (88.62–358.07 g), number of seed (37.67–195.40), seed weight (7.48–54.33 g), pulp weight (201.17–1243.87 g), skin % (9.59–42.83%), seed % (0.97–7.97%), pulp % (53.72–89.33%), skin thickness (1.43–4.10 mm), volume of fruit (285.00–1555.00 cc), TSS (24.40–47.80°Brix), acidity (0.15–0.40%), reducing sugar (0.37–11.90 mg/100 g) and total sugars (7.14–20.83 mg/100 g) among the different genotypes. On the basis of overall assessment, one genotype, ICAR-RCER BS 6/1 was found to be the most promising. Based on fruit properties, principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to qualitatively and quantitatively discriminate the germplasm difference. Eight principal components, which contribute 94.80% of the total variability, were selected for analysis. Biplot between PC1 and PC2 showed that genotypes namely ICAR-RCER BS 6/1, 18/2, 25/5, 21/1, 17/3, 26/1, 18/5, 1/11, 8/1 and 14/4 were very different from each other.

Jamun (Syzigium cuminii Skeels) is gradually gaining importance due to its extraordinary medicinal properties and enhanced demand for fresh fruit, which is buttressed by the growth of the processing industry. Curative property of Jamun fruits against Diabetes mellitus type 2 has boosted its commercial orcharding, which necessitates gathering precise information on phenological responses to changing temperature and precipitation. A modified three digit extended Biologische Bundesanstalt Bundessortenamt and Chemische Industrie (BBCH) scale was developed and assigned 3 digit codes to describe the important phenological stages. Eight principal growth stages and 36 secondary stages have been described with illustrations that occur sequentially in Jamun under subtropics. Interestingly the primary phenophases of vegetative phenology i.e. bud development, leaf development and shoot development showed a large overlap and the interrupted phenostages are attributed to the inclemental weather conditions. Thus, under a warm temperate subtropical climate in the northern hemisphere, Jamun canopies presented two vegetative flushes (represented as mesostage 1 and 2), the second flush registering highest frequency (60–80 %) in months of September to October. This is in contrast to continuous growth under tropical climate conditions, wherein growth cessation does not occur. While vegetative growth flush occurred twice a year in a major part of canopy, flower-bearing panicles emerged on mature shoots in the months of February and March. Floral induction characterized by the inflorescence emergence and subsequent blooming closely followed the upswing of average monthly minimum and maximum temperature curve under subtropics, while average temperature downturn coupled with high precipitation released the vegetative flush episode. The phenostage (5) involving inflorescence emergence and growth occurred once in the subtropical climate, sustaining for around 8 weeks, followed by flowering (6) and fruit development(7). As with other evergreen trees, vegetative growth did not depict cessation and dormancy was observed after harvest and onset of winter. The correlation of emerging phenological events with temperature and humidity established the utility of the BBCH code for forecasting the outcomes of the canopy shoots. Early fruit production and synchronous shoot growth can be targeted by imposing shoot pruning strategy immediately after harvest at dormancy. The study establishes interplay of ecogeography and germplasm for expression of standard phenostages and the impact of climate change on fruit productivity.

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is a major indicator of long-term sustenance of agricultural production system. Apart from sustaining productivity, SOC plays a crucial role in context of climate change. Keeping in mind these potentials, spatial variation of SOC contents of a fruit orchard comprising several arid fruit plantations located at arid region of India is assessed in this study through geostatistical approaches. For this purpose, surface and subsurface soil samples from 175 locations from a fruit orchard spreading over 14.33 ha area were collected along with geographical coordinates. SOC content and soil physicochemical properties of collected soil samples were determined followed by geostatistical analysis for mapping purposes. Average SOC stock density of the orchard was 14.48 Mg ha(-1) for 0- to 30-cm soil layer ranging from 9.01 Mg ha(-1) in Carissa carandas to 19.52 Mg ha(-1) in Prosopis cineraria block. Range of spatial variation of SOC content was found about 100 m, while two other soil physicochemical properties, e.g., pH and electrical conductivity (EC) also showed similar spatial trend. This indicated that minimum sampling distance for future SOC mapping programme may be kept lower than 100 m for better accuracy. Ordinary kriging technique satisfactorily predicted SOC contents (in percent) at unsampled locations with root-mean-squared residual (RMSR) of 0.35-0.37. Co-kriging approach was found slightly superior (RMSR = 0.26-0.28) than ordinary kriging for spatial prediction of SOC contents because of significant correlations of SOC contents with pH and EC. Uncertainty of SOC estimation was also presented in terms of 90 % confidence interval. Spatial estimates of SOC stock through ordinary kriging or co-kriging approach were also found with low uncertainty of estimation than non-spatial estimates, e.g., arithmetic averaging approach. Among different fruit block plantations of the orchard, the block with Prosopis cineraria ('khejri') has higher SOC stock density than others.