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Accurate forecasting of various phenomenon has got crucial importance in the scenario of Indian agriculture as this helps farmers, policy-makers and government to acquire informed decisions. Agricultural time series datasets are mostly nonlinear, nonstationary, non-normal and heteroscedastic in nature. Though the stochastic model like autoregressive integrated moving average and its component models have gained much popularity in modeling linear dynamics, they fail to capture the nonlinearity present in the series. Machine learning (ML) techniques like artificial neural network (ANN) has rapidly emerged within the area of forecasting to take care of nonlinearity in the dataset. But, the presence of high chaotic nature and sophisticated nonlinear structure of the series sometimes distorts the particular model specification. Therefore, preprocessing of the series is required to extract the actual signal in it. Wavelet transformation may be an efficient tool in this scenario. The decomposed and denoised components through wavelet transformation can be modeled using ANN to make wavelet-based hybrid models and eventually, inverse wavelet transform is carried out to obtain the prediction of original series. The incontrovertible fact is that these hybrid models handle nonstationary, nonlinear and non-normal features of datasets simultaneously. The present study discusses the above approach envisaging monthly wholesale tomato price of three major markets in India, namely Ahmedabad, Burdwan and Madanapalli. The improvement over conventional techniques is obtained to a great extent by using wavelet-based combination approach with ML technique as exhibited through empirical evidence.

The present study compares the effects of two green tea processing techniques, viz. orthodox and CTC (curl, tear and crush) on the quality parameters and sensory profiles under the geographical and climatic conditions of Assam, India. The results showed that CTC green tea infusions had 13.3, 7.5, 7.1, 9.8, 5.4, 17.3, 17.1 and 18.6% more total polyphenol, total catechin, (−)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), (−)-epicatechin-3-gallate (ECG), (−)-epigallocatechin (EGC), (−)-epicatechin (EC), water extract and theanine level, respectively than the infusions prepared from orthodox green tea. The sensory evaluation preferred the orthodox over CTC processing mode. Risk assessment with daily consumption of five cups (10 g) of green tea reveals that the EGCG level is free from the risk of hepatotoxicity and caffeine will not inflict any health hazard.

The study had been made to forecast the price of mango using ARIMA model in one of the major markets of Uttar Pradesh as the state ranks first position in production of mango in India. Varanasi market was selected purposively on the basis of second highest arrival market of mango in the state. Using ARIMA methodology on the monthly prices of mango collected from the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC), Varanasi for the year 1993 to 2015. As the mango fruit having property of alternate bearing, only six month data from March to August was available in the market and accordingly had been used for forecasting analysis using E-views 7 software. The results revealed that the price in selected market was found to be highest during the start of the season using ARIMA (1,0,6) model, confirming the validity of model through Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE). The MAPE was found to be less than 10 per cent for one step ahead forecast of year 2015. Forecasted price for the month of March was almost double than the price of other months. It indicates the necessity of adopting pre and post harvest management technologies for getting the benefit over increase in prices.

An agriculture-dominated developing country like India has been always in need of efficient and reliable time series forecasting methodologies to describe various agricultural phenomenons, whereas agricultural price forecasting continue to be the challenging areas in this domain. The observed features of many temporal price data set constitute complex nonlinearity, and modeling these features often go beyond the capability of Box–Jenkins autoregressive integrated moving average methodology. Moreover, despite the popularity and sheer power of traditional neural network model, the empirical forecasting performance of this model has not been found satisfactory in all cases. To address the problem, wavelet-based modeling approach is recently upsurging. Present study discusses two wavelet-based neural network approaches envisaging monthly wholesale onion price of three markets, namely Bangalore, Hubli, and Solapur. Wavelet-based decomposition makes it possible to describe the useful pattern of the series from both global as well as local aspects and found to be highly proficient in denoising and capturing the inherent pattern of the series through a distinctive approach. Besides, wavelet method can also be used as a tool for function approximation. The improvement upon time-delay neural network also be made up to a great extent through using wavelet-based approaches as exhibited through proper empirical evidence.

Rainfall anomaly during crop-growing season can have large impact on the agricultural output of a country, especially like India, where two-thirds of the crop land is rain-fed. In such situation, decreased agricultural production not only challenges food security of the country but directly and immediately hits the livelihood of its farming community. In a vast country like India, rainfall or its anomalies hardly follow a specific pattern, rather it is having high variability in spatial domain. This study focused on the trends of national and regional rainfall anomalies (wetness/dryness) along with their interrelationship using time series data of past 158 years. The significant reducing wetness trend (p

Background: Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) is a common problem in patients with chronic liver disease (CLD) and is characterized by diminished mentation and neuromuscular abnormalities. Rifaximin has been reported to be effective for the treatment of hepatic encephalopathy (HE) in Europe and other countries. It is unknown whether rifaximin is effective for the treatment of hepatic encephalopathy in Bangladeshi patients.Methods: A prospective, randomized, single blind, placebo controlled study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of rifaximin among patients with cirrhosis of liver with hepatic encephalopathy. A total sixty patients of HE fulfilling inclusion criteria were randomly enrolled among those admitted under Gastrointestinal, Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Disorders (GHPD) department of BIRDEM General Hospital during August 2012 to April 2013. Patients were divided into two groups: group A (receiving Tab. rifaximin with lactulose), the total number of patients were 31(51.7%) and group B (receiving placebo with lactulose), it was 29(48.3%). Enrolled patients were followed up for 10 days or up to discharge from the hospital or death. At enrollment and at the end of treatment, gradation of HE and estimation of portosystemic encephalopathy (PSE) index was done.Results: In this study between two groups, mean age difference (p=0.404), gender difference (p=0.668) and CLD duration difference (p=0.555) were not statistically significant between two groups. At enrollment, prognostic scores e.g. Child-Turcotte-Pugh (CTP) score (p=0.489) and PSE index (p=0.934) were not significantly different between two groups. At the end of treatment, group A patients showed significantly lower HE grade (P=0.045) and PSE index (P

India is the second largest producer of onion in the world. Though newer states, like Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, are emerging in onion production; onion is still largely concentrated in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka, one dominating in rabi onion and the other one in kharif onion. Despite tremendous production growth and trade opportunities, India suffers from very high volatility in onion production. Markets in the leading state i.e., Maharashtra, are pre-dominant in terms of onion supply and distribution and thereby creating strong influences on other markets. Lasalgaon, Pimpalgaon, Bangalore and Solapur are the major markets transmitting price signals to other major consuming and producing markets. The market surveillance needs to be given due priority to control for any imperfections and malpractices arising due to advance signals. The instability in production can be reduced by diluting regional concentration of onion production. Stabilisation through stocks by public sector agencies like NAFED will help reducing the exploitation and market manipulation by private traders. The storage capacity needs to be enhanced at the grass root level. Effective use of Government schemes like “Price Stabilisation Fund” and “Operation Greens” would help in creating mechanisms and logistics to control the price volatility.

The analysis of production and area under okra (Abelmoschus esculentus Linn.) in India showed a perceptible trend in growing preference of okra crops among farmers. There is a decline in growth rate of yield of okra. The analysis also showed that though there is a steady increase in the area as well in production under okra crops. The growth rate as well as forecasting from 2017–18 to 2020–21 showed the increasing trend. Graphical representation also showed the increasing trend of okra.

The powerful methodology of “Wavelet analysis in frequency domain” for analyzing time-series data is studied. As an illustration, Indian monsoon rainfall time-series data from 1879–2006 is considered. The entire data analysis is carried out using SPLUS WAVELET TOOLKIT software package. The discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and multiresolution analysis (MRA) of the data are computed to analyze the behaviour of trend present in the time-series data in terms of different times and scales. By using bootstrap method, size and power of the test for testing significance of trend in the data is computed. It is found that the size of the test for Daubechies wavelet is more than that for Haar wavelet. In respect of both Daubechies and Haar wavelet filters, it is found that the test for presence of trend is unbiased. Also, power of the test for both Daubechies (D4) and Haar wavelets, at level 5 is less than the one at level 6. Further, Haar wavelet at level 6 has generally performed better than Daubechies (D4) wavelet at level 6 in terms of power of the test. Using the former wavelet, a declining trend in the data under consideration is revealed.

The livestock sector provides promising opportunities and is assumed to bring desired growth in farmers’ income, especially in less and poor endowed regions. The present study has delineated the entire country into four zones, viz. Least Performing Zone (LPZ), Average Performing Zone (APZ), Good Performing Zone (GPZ) and Well Performing Zone (WPZ) based on district level livestock income for effective policy formulation and implementation. The drivers of livestock income were identified through multiple regression framework for regional interventions. Crossbred adoption and crossbred milk yield with elasticity of 0.09 and 0.42, respectively, are found to significantly contribute to enhancing livestock income. Thus, crossbreeding should be geared up especially in LPZ as an income enhancement strategy. The buffalo farming has emerged as an important contributor in raising farmers’ income through meat production. The productivity enhancement strategy for buffaloes along with indigenous cattle will be a win-win situation as these animals are well adapted to tropical climate of the country. Further, special attention is required for strengthening marketing network through co-operatives for better procurement and prices with utmost priority in LPZ, as only 12 per cent of milk produced is sold to the co-operatives. The state governments in conjunction with all stakeholders, including research institutions and private players have to play a catalytic role in mainstreaming the livestock development, especially in the identified disadvantageous regions/zone as an entry point for the socio-economic upliftment of the region as well as the nation as a whole.

Uttarakhand state has 26 principal market yards, 31 sub-market yards and 27 weekly markets for marketing of agricultural produce which are regulated effectively in 11 districts of the state. However, majority of the districts of this state is located in hilly region, but the principal markets are largely located in the plain regions. Although, the entire hill region is covered under the provision of Agricultural Produce Market Act, 1964; despite this, the major hill markets are still non-functioning. However, Haldwani market which is the best market in terms of marketing welfare has the highest number of functionaries and covers about 20% of total functionaries, As far as the farmer's perception about the prevailing marketing system and practices is concerned, majority of the farmers from Nainital, Udham Singh Nagar and Almora district were satisfied with the boarding/lodging, weighment, grading, cleanliness and, information sharing, who largely sell their produce to Haldwani market or the grain Mandies in Rudrapur, Jaspur, Sitarganj etc. But these farmers have also expressed their dissatisfaction on the account of cold storage facilities and the exploitative practices of traders and management of the markets especially during the rainy season in the agricultural markets of Uttarakhand. It may be inferred that the hilly regions of the state require special attention on the marketing interventions and infrastructure due to difficult terrains and limited bargaining and handling capacity of the growers resulting from lower size of holding and lack of resources.

The study compared the status of market infrastructure across the selected regulated markets of Uttarakhand by market infrastructure development index computed for three categories viz., trade infrastructure, storage infrastructure and support infrastructure. Haldwani emerges as the best-equipped market as per the combined index (score of 0.62) and also outscores highest among the trade, storage and support infrastructural categories. Kashipur stands next in the category due to its better positioning in trade infrastructure while Dehradun scores low in the combined index due to poor trade and storage infrastructure despite standing second in the infrastructure support category. A positive and significant association was noticed between the commodity arrivals (potato and tomato) and market infrastructure categories. A panel regression analysis between potato arrivals, price, and market Dummies reveals that price has no time varying effect on the arrival of potato, but showed a significant and positive relationship between the markets and arrival reflecting the dependence of arrivals on market attributes.

The current study focuses to explore the degree of market integration in William Bartlett variety of pear grown in Kashmir, commonly known as Bagughosha, through co-integration analysis on the wholesale weekly prices of its two commercial grades Bagughosha Super and Bagughosha Special, collected from two national fruit markets of India (Delhi and Mumbai), from August, 2005 to October, 2013. The results reveal that Pear markets were co integrated and competitive. A disequilibrium ranging from 16.47 to 50.33% among the selected grades of the fruit was observed. VAR and VECM models were used to study the behaviour of market prices, which revealed that Delhi market turned most dominating market for higher prices of the selected variety and grades.