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Agri-entrepreneurship being very important component of attracting youth to agriculture, the efforts made by different public agencies in India in this direction through various interventions and enterprises needed to be studied. Mushroom (Agaricus bisporus) production is one of the most popular enterprises promoted to pursue this objective throughout India. This study considered 2016–17 as the base year and 2020–21 as the assessment year. Mushroom production in India almost doubled during the assessment period (1.29 lakh tonnes in 2016–17 and 2.59 lakh tonnes in 2020–21) at a robust compound annual growth rate of 19.17%. The net agricultural income of the respondents at national level (other than mushroom income) was ₹1.25 lakh/annum during 2020–21 while their net income from mushroom cultivation was 2.48 lakh/annum. On an average 532 man-days of employment per unit was generated by the mushroom entrepreneurs at national level with considerable variation in income and employment generation across the states/UTs. Age of the entrepreneur was found having negative effect on employment generation, validating the relevance of attracting rural youth to agriculture in India. The lack of ability of resource centres for building capacity of the entrepreneurs for generating net income to the level of sizeable proportion of their annual expected livelihood was observed to be the strong reason for higher attrition rate in this enterprise. The insights suggest that redesigning of capacity building programs and institutional supports as per the current challenges in entrepreneurship development can better influence the ultimate outcomes.

To make Indian agriculture remunerative, and enhance farmers’ income, the Government of India initiated a mission for doubling the farmers’ income (DFI) by 2022. For DFI under a conventional cropping system, the agriculture sector needs to grow @15% per annum. Therefore, there is a need for reorienting the conventional cropping system with a more productive alternative integrated farming system, combining on and off-farm occupations with high technological support. With this background, the present study was carried out in a cluster of villages where interventions through a research institution (Farmer FIRST project) were made. Such interventions were undertaken in a cluster of 7 villages involving 500 farm families (2016–19). The technological gaps were identified through benchmark surveys using participatory rural appraisal (PRA) and extensive farmers' group discussions. During this, farmers’ skills and managerial capabilities were explored, and 16 interventions of various farming modules and sub-modules attributed to higher income were identified and implemented. The farmers were continuously provided technological and partial input support in terms of capacity building and seeds, fertilisers and similar others. The results indicated that mushroom production had high potential for supplementing farm income (117% per farm family). The income from food grains increased by 81% whereas, income from seasonal and off-season vegetable crops increased by more than double. Dairy farming exhibited 52.38% increase in income. In absolute terms, the dairy had maximum contribution in increasing income by ₹24,014 followed by food grains (₹13,251). The intervention modules increased the average per-farm family income by ₹46,979, which was highly significant (P75% in just 2 years. Overall, when four modules and sub-modules of the model were put together, the total farm income per family increased by 67% from ₹70,290 (2016–17) to ₹1,17,269 (2018–19).

Farmers are convinced if the message has trustworthiness and is from credible communication sources. In this context, we considered the Mann Ki Baat programme narrated by the Hon’ble Prime Minister as a key motivational factor in shaping the smallholder farmers’ perception vis-a-vis the importance of innovative learning, mobilization, and better access and adoption of the institutional resources (e.g. agri-inputs, agro-advisories, skill development etc.) as efficient means to adapt to the emerging challenges. This study was carried out to draw insights and lessons on the pattern and frequency of listening to the various Mann Ki Baat topics by the smallholder farmers, and how this led to a behavioural change for the sustainable management of agri-food systems. The observations recorded from 1,364 farmers from various states of India revealed that natural farming, conservation of natural resources and willingness to adopt the integrated farming systems (diversification) were the most preferred topics of Mann Ki Baat by the smallholder farmers. Notwithstanding their relatively poor adaptive capacity, a majority of the sample farmers agreed that ideas communicated through Mann Ki Baat were easily implementable on their farms. The perceived trickle-down effect of Mann Ki Baat was also instrumental in mobilizing the farmers to better access the institutional resources, facilitated by an enabling networking with the KVKs and other institutions. This process of change may augur well for enhanced reciprocal learning, enabling the smallholder farmers to better cope up with suit of stresses. It also emerged that mass scale awareness programmes such as Mann Ki Baat by the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India were seen as credible sources of inspiration, paving the way for sustainable agricultural production and entrepreneurial development in the rural hinterlands of India.

Grape (Vitis vinifera L.) is one of the major fruit crops of India and the largest grape producing states are Maharashtra followed by Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Mizoram and Andhra Pradesh. The glaring inefficiencies in the supply chain of grapes along with its perishable nature leads to huge losses. The study identified farm size, knowledge level, experience, training received, timely labour availability and distance from farm to market as significant determinants of the losses. Though a lot of research and extension has been done on the technologies for improved production and loss reduction, the adoption of the recommendations by the farmers has been found to be differential. Thus, we need to isolate the factors which hinder the adoption of such recommendations. The present study (2019–21) identified the major constraints as the high initial investment in infrastructure, lack of market intelligence system, unavailability of skilled labour, unavailability of timely chemicals and equipments and thus, chalks out the future strategy accordingly to minimise the losses.

Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyaan (GKRA) initiative was announced by the government of India in June 2020 for a period of 125 days to create livelihood opportunities for the returned migrants in their states and to sustain rural development. GKRA was convergent effort between 12 different ministries/departments covering 25 activities over 116 districts of 6 states. As different stakeholders were involved, therefore for effective monitoring and data exchange an IT platform was created at central level (https://gkra.nic.in) where all departments exchanged data for consecutive 15 weeks. Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) organized skill development training programmes for livelihood through Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK). E-Governance of these training programmes and exchange of data to central GKRA portal was managed through a module developed during July-October 2020 under KVK Knowledge Network Portal (https://kvk.icar.gov.in) at ICAR-Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute and hosted at ICAR Data Centre, ICAR-IASRI, New Delhi. The emphasis of the training programmes was on the areas of integrated farming to support livelihood. Overall, the participants were satisfied with the quality of training programmes conducted by KVKs. KVKs also supported participants in handholding of technology and setting up their own venture. IT platforms provided efficient storing and retrieval of data, framework for exchange of information and enhanced visibility in the initiative.

Community engagement is a crucial element for effective management of natural resources. This study is aimed at determining the factors and analyzing their path for collective action behavior of farmers towards natural resource management. Two cases of community based natural resource management were conducted in Phek and Kohima districts of Nagaland during 2020 and with thematic their analysis of activities, the probable factors of collective action among the communities were listed. Through participatory rural appraisal, focus group discussion and personal interview method data, was collected with a total sample size of randomly selected 106 farmers. The composite reliability for the explanatory variables, viz. social cohesiveness, normative belief, collective action for resource management, trust, community orientation, social relationship, and shared values were 0.79, 0.81,0.92, 0.6, 0.72, 0.78, and 0.52, respectively. Exploratory factor analysis resulted in 7 factors with 63.7% of the total variance explained. The obtained factors were validated through measurement modelling by confirmatory factor analysis. The structural model had goodness of fit with acceptable values of RMSEA (0.09), GFI (0.96) and CFI (0.92). The relationship of community orientation was found highly significant with normative belief (Z=6.36**); social cohesiveness (2.27**) and collective action (Z=3.47**). Emphasis should be laid upon promotion of normative beliefs, local institutions, and social values for augmentation of collective action for natural resource management.

Horticulture sector in India is witnessing a continuous expansion. Simultaneously, a significant amount of produce is lost due to the post-harvest losses. Studies report a wide gap between the rate of technology development by research institutes and the uptake of the same by grass-root farmers. This can be attributed to the lack of information or in-depth knowledge about such technologies. The present study has examined the current status of onion farmers' knowledge and the level of adoption of the recommended pre-harvest and post-harvest management practices. The study was carried out during 2020 in purposively selected Junnar and Dindori blocks of Pune and Nashik districts, Maharashtra respectively. The study revealed that 40% of the respondents clustered under the high knowledge category and 41.67% respondents displayed medium level of adoption. Majority of the respondents were knowledgeable and adopted practices like harvesting at the optimum time and correct stage of maturity, proper handling, curing, sorting, grading, and packaging at field level. However, they overlooked the adoption of certain essential practices, for instance selection of suitable cultivars, nursery management, application of bio-fertilizers, bio-fungicides, market intelligence and secondary processing. The emphasis should be to devise a mix of appropriate extension strategies to narrow down the knowledge-practice gap faced by the onion farmers.

The Central government efforts to help the farmers by providing fund to meet the agricultural and other household needs through direct benefit transfer has gained importance in the recent years. The present study was carried out in Tumkur district of Karnataka 2020 with the objetives; To evaluate the utilization pattern of PM-KISAN scheme and; To analyse the impact of PM-KISAN scheme on technology adoption and on during farm income. The study revealed that the timely transfer of fund has helped farmers in carrying out timely agricultural opertions.The scheme has enabled greater proportion of beneficiary farmers to adopt improved production technology, realisation of higher amount of gross returns from groundnut production as compared to that by non-beneficiaries. The increase in gross returns is found to be due to not only use of right kind and dosage of inputs but also due to adotion of improved production technology. The timeliness of receipt of installment amount influenced its use for agriculture purpose leading to generation of higher income. The PM KISAN scheme is beneficial to farmers and needs to be popularized.

For appropriate technology dissemination to farmers, social sciences in agriculture especially Extension Education act as a bridge connecting researchers and farmers therefore, the aim of post graduate courses at agricultural universities is to develop suitable human resource with desired competencies to enable effective extension work. As teaching effectiveness is crucial for achieving academic excellence and to inculcate desired competencies among students, the attributes of teachers contributing towards teaching effectiveness need to be analysed. This study was conducted during 2019 and examines the perception of 210 postgraduate (M Sc and Ph D) students across 10 agricultural universities of Northern India. Teachers were categorized based on scores of attributes obtained through student ratings. The association between teacher attributes and overall teaching effectiveness was calculated and finally a teaching effectiveness framework was designed based on those attributes, which were significantly associated with teaching effectiveness. It was also found that majority of students rated overall teaching effectiveness under medium category (48.09%) followed by high category (34.76%). In addition, all attributes were found to be positively correlated with overall teaching effectiveness. Out of 32 items under all attributes, 27 items which were significantly associated with teaching effectiveness were included in teaching effectiveness framework. In light of the findings, suggestions were also formulated for teachers regarding their teaching attributes as perceived by students.

The present investigation is an attempt to map the tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) value chains existing in the Champawat district of the Uttarakhand (during 2016–17) to know the market dynamics in it. Estimation of production dynamics showed an average cost of production of tomato as ₹ 80077/ha with an average net return of ₹ 158123/ ha. Data collected from the study area revealed the existence of two marketing channels with different players and interconnection (C1: Producer- Retailers-Consumer and C2: Producer -Whole sellers – Retailers-Consumers) on which tomato farmers were dependent to reach the final consumers. Value chain mapping revealed that producers share in consumers’ price in net benefit terms for C1 was 52.06% and for C2 was 27.06% though the value added for tomato till reaching the final consumers in both channels were apparently same. This showed the necessity of tactical policy integration in value chain procedural development in tomato. Reforms are also needed in the existing marketing mechanism to make a change in it, in an ‘actor-activity-client oriented beneficial and profitable’ direction.

Most of the Indian soils are deficient in one or more minerals and these minerals are important in numerous biochemical reactions and deficiency may lead to metabolic diseases resulting lowering production performance in dairy animals. The study attempts to evaluate status nutrient intake in dairy animals, effect of reappropriation of available feed resources and mineral mixture supplementation on production performance in lactating cows and buffaloes in Katesara and Amarpur villages under Farmers’ FIRST project in Palwal district. The animals were in their early lactation (40±5 days in milk) and milk yield, its composition, body weight and body condition score was recorded. Among the cow, 28% deficit, 35% excess dry matter; 41% deficit and 11% excess crude protein; 33% deficit and 25% excess total digestible nutrients (TDN) was provided. In buffaloes, 36% deficit and 40% excess DM; 45% deficit and 15% excess CP; 25% deficit and 12% excess TDN was provided. Reappropriation of DM, CP and TDN was done using available feed/ fodders available to the farmers and after 15 days, mineral mixture was provided @ 50 g/d for 60 days. The production performance record reveals no change in body weight but BCS was improved. Milk yield, fat, protein in cows were improved and other composition were remain unchanged. In buffaloes, milk yield, fat and protein improved while others, viz. lactose, SNF, ash and TS were similar due to supplementation of mineral mixture. The results conclude that imbalance of nutrients existed to the tune of 10 to 45% among various nutrients. One of the best propositions could be supplementation of mineral mixture to improve milk yield (10 to 14%) and fat per cent under field condition in both cows and buffaloes.

Weeding activity in vegetable cultivation carried out by women is one of the drudgery prone activities. Women are regularly adopting poor and static posture while doing weeding for long hours by traditional equipment, resulting in various physical load on spine or lumbo-sacral region leads to drudgery coupled with work related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). The research paper aims to assess and quantify the drudgery with weeding activity by rural women in which physiological ergonomics evaluation was done for traditional method and with improved technological support with three replications of fifteen minutes work cycle without rest pause. Ergonomic parameters namely Heart Rate, Energy Expenditure Rate, Total Cardiac Cost of Work, Physiological Cost of Work, VO2 Max were measured during the experiments. Observations were recorded on farm women worker with normal health, without any major illness, regularly involved in farm operations and were in the age group of 25 to 45 years. Weeding activity of farm women was quantified and a sample of 10 physically fit rural women having permissible limit of physiological parameters were selected for the study. It was found from investigation that there was reduction in human physiological parameters, viz. heart rate, energy expenditure rate, Total Cardiac Cost of Work, Physiological Cost of work, Blood pressure and Oxygen Saturation.

The difficulty prone and disadvantageous areas of the country, generally being untouched and unreached in terms of efficient execution of agricultural development programmes and policy measures, the frontline extension set-up is expected to be effective enough to voice and take over development issues of the inhabitant peasants. Concurrent to the concern, the present study aimed at a functionary level performance appraisal of the frontline extension system in north eastern region of India with a sample size of 231 Subject Matter Specialists (SMSs) from 59 Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) across the eight north eastern states. A principal component analysis based Composite Job Performance Index (CJPI) was developed to measure performance of the respondent SMSs in different job areas. The study revealed that the human resource development and organizational development intervention for harnessing optimum performance of the SMSs require immediate emphasis. The overall performance in the area of field crop production and improvement was the best among the seven thrust areas identified under the study, although performance in extension and communication modelling generated real concern as per the CJPI. A regression analysis depicted that gender, physical facilities, support and professional mentorship received from the host institute, and participation in knowledge sharing forums had significant association with job performance. Timely and adequately funding the KVKs for infrastructure development is crucial along with wilful self-updating and self-development on the part of the functionaries for harnessing optimum individual performance and thereby overall functioning of the frontline extension system.

Major concern of today’s agriculture and allied sector is to tumble wastage and increase farmers’ income. Post harvest operation and value addition of the farm products is one important way to attain this goal. Even if Indian dairy sector has a well renowned position in the world milk market in terms of production, processing and value addition percentage at the farmer level is not in a recognisable stage. Marketing channels, marketing efficiency and price spread of the identified marketing channels among milk producers and milk processors have been analysed here. Comparative study of the producers share in consumer’s rupee of value added milk products and liquid milk showed a significant difference. It was more than 96% in processing of milk and nearly 85% in raw milk. Marketing efficiency analysis showed that channel I (Producer –Consumer) was the most efficient in both group. Price of value added food (Mean Ranks of Friedman’s test is 9.10) was the most important factor which attracts the milk processors to take value addition and post harvest management decisions. Infrastructure related constraints (Mean Rank of Kruskal-Wallis test 28.70) were the major constraint faced by the dairy processors. Under that lack of power and electricity and non-availability of machineries in local places (Mean Ranks of Friedman’s test is 7.70) were identified as the major constraints in the study area. As per the milk producers, technical inhibiting factors (Mean Rank of Kruskal-Wallis test 40.25) prevent them from undertaking the post harvest operations and value addition in raw milk.

The rural youth are disoriented and clueless in the face of lack of income generating and employment opportunities. The problems of young men and women, as well as their vision and aspirations are essential elements of the challenges facing today's societies and future generations. Farm and nonfarm enterprises in rural areas will be able to channelize energies of youth population in a constructive manner for regional and consequently national development. An action research project was undertaken by IARI for enhancing entrepreneurship among rural youth aiming at identification, prioritization of feasible agricultural technology, technological empowerment and hand holding for agripreneurship development in four selected villages of National Capital Region of Delhi; namely Partapur (Hapur), Hasangarh (Rohtak), Kansala (Rohtak) and Badarpur Said (Faridabad). The participatory prioritization was done involving micro screening exercise which is a very important step positioned between the project idea generation and the final decision about the most promising business idea. Micro screening exercise based on situational analysis of villages revealed that floriculture, seed production, net house cultivation, vermi compost/organic products, apiary, value addition, mushroom production and dairy enterprises excelled in order of scores gained irrespective of location. The psychological traits including need for achievement, aspirations and risk taking willingness of the potential entrepreneurs were found to be of moderate level at initial stage.

Background: With increasingly intensive treatments and population ageing, more people face complex treatment and care decisions. We explored patterns of the decision-making processes during critical care, and sources of conflict and resolution., Methods: Ethnographic study in two Intensive Care Units (ICUs) in an inner city hospital comprising: non-participant observation of general care and decisions, followed by case studies where treatment limitation decisions, comfort care and/or end of life discussions were occurring. These involved: semi-structured interviews with consenting families, where possible, patients; direct observations of care; and review of medical records., Results: Initial non-participant observation included daytime, evenings, nights and weekends. The cases were 16 patients with varied diagnoses, aged 19-87 years; 19 family members were interviewed, aged 30-73 years. Cases were observed for <1 to 156 days (median 22), depending on length of ICU admission. Decisions were made serially over the whole trajectory, usually several days or weeks. We identified four trajectories with distinct patterns: curative care from admission; oscillating curative and comfort care; shift to comfort care; comfort care from admission. Some families considered decision-making a negative concept and preferred uncertainty. Conflict occurred most commonly in the trajectories with oscillating curative and comfort care. Conflict also occurred inside clinical teams. Families were most often involved in decision-making regarding care outcomes and seemed to find it easier when patients switched definitively from curative to comfort care. We found eight categories of decision-making; three related to the care outcomes (aim, place, response to needs) and five to the care processes (resuscitation, decision support, medications/fluids, monitoring/interventions, other specialty involvement)., Conclusions: Decision-making in critical illness involves a web of discussions regarding the potential outcomes and processes of care, across the whole disease trajectory. When measures oscillate between curative and comfort there is greatest conflict. This suggests a need to support early communication, especially around values and preferred care outcomes, from which other decisions follow, including DNAR. Offering further support, possibly with expert palliative care, communication, and discussion of 'trial of treatment' may be beneficial at this time, rather than waiting until the 'end of life'.

Gravitational waves from a variety of sources are predicted to superpose to create a stochastic background. This background is expected to contain unique information from throughout the history of the Universe that is unavailable through standard electromagnetic observations, making its study of fundamental importance to understanding the evolution of the Universe. We carry out a search for the stochastic background with the latest data from the LIGO and Virgo detectors. Consistent with predictions from most stochastic gravitational-wave background models, the data display no evidence of a stochastic gravitational-wave signal. Assuming a gravitational-wave spectrum of Ω&#95;{GW}(f)=Ω&#95;{α}(f/f&#95;{ref})^{α}, we place 95% confidence level upper limits on the energy density of the background in each of four frequency bands spanning 41.5-1726 Hz. In the frequency band of 41.5-169.25 Hz for a spectral index of α=0, we constrain the energy density of the stochastic background to be Ω&#95;{GW}(f)<5.6×10^{-6}. For the 600-1000 Hz band, Ω&#95;{GW}(f)<0.14(f/900  Hz)^{3}, a factor of 2.5 lower than the best previously reported upper limits. We find Ω&#95;{GW}(f)<1.8×10^{-4} using a spectral index of zero for 170-600 Hz and Ω&#95;{GW}(f)<1.0(f/1300  Hz)^{3} for 1000-1726 Hz, bands in which no previous direct limits have been placed. The limits in these four bands are the lowest direct measurements to date on the stochastic background. We discuss the implications of these results in light of the recent claim by the BICEP2 experiment of the possible evidence for inflationary gravitational waves.

We present the results of a search for gravitational waves associated with 223 γ-ray bursts (GRBs) detected by the InterPlanetary Network (IPN) in 2005-2010 during LIGO's fifth and sixth science runs and Virgo's first, second, and third science runs. The IPN satellites provide accurate times of the bursts and sky localizations that vary significantly from degree scale to hundreds of square degrees. We search for both a well-modeled binary coalescence signal, the favored progenitor model for short GRBs, and for generic, unmodeled gravitational wave bursts. Both searches use the event time and sky localization to improve the gravitational wave search sensitivity as compared to corresponding all-time, all-sky searches. We find no evidence of a gravitational wave signal associated with any of the IPN GRBs in the sample, nor do we find evidence for a population of weak gravitational wave signals associated with the GRBs. For all IPN-detected GRBs, for which a sufficient duration of quality gravitational wave data are available, we place lower bounds on the distance to the source in accordance with an optimistic assumption of gravitational wave emission energy of 10(-2)M⊙c(2) at 150 Hz, and find a median of 13 Mpc. For the 27 short-hard GRBs we place 90% confidence exclusion distances to two source models: a binary neutron star coalescence, with a median distance of 12 Mpc, or the coalescence of a neutron star and black hole, with a median distance of 22 Mpc. Finally, we combine this search with previously published results to provide a population statement for GRB searches in first-generation LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors and a resulting examination of prospects for the advanced gravitational wave detectors.

Background: No previous research exists specifically exploring the needs of those people severely affected by multiple sclerosis (MS)., Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with people identified by the referring health or social care professional as being severely affected by their MS and informal carers, in order to explore their perceptions of their illness and care. The data were analysed for themes using the constant comparative approach., Results: The data relate to 32 people severely affected by MS, who identified several broad themes, relating to loss and change, and provision of services and care. In relation to service provision, people with MS (PwMS) and their carers identified two, interlinked themes--a lack of continuity and co-ordination of care, and a lack of information about services, aids and adaptations, welfare benefits and end-of-life issues. A further theme was identified, which underpinned and linked the two other themes, that of ;fighting for everything'--a sense that people had to struggle for their needs to be met., Conclusion: There is a need to develop models of care in order to better meet patients and carers needs for information, co-ordination, and to reduce the feeling of struggling to receive services.

One hundred and six consecutive patients started on glucocorticosteroids (steroids) according to a defined prescription policy were surveyed each week to document the indications for use, any beneficial effect, any toxicity incurred and the reason for stopping. All patients had advanced malignant disease and survived for a median of 40.5 days (range 1-398+ days) from the start of steroid treatment. Fifty-seven per cent of patients completed three or more assessments. The most common specific indications for starting steroids were spinal cord compression, cerebral metastases, lymphangitis carcinomatosa and intestinal obstruction. The most common non-specific indications were anorexia, nausea, low mood, pain and vomiting. The median duration of steroid use was 21.5 days (range 1-89 days). The most common reason for the discontinuation of steroids was death or deteriorating condition. Symptom scores improved at some stage for the majority of patients started on steroids for anorexia, nausea, pain, low mood, vomiting and weakness but not in patients complaining of dyspnoea or poor mobility. The most common side-effects that were most probably attributable to steroid therapy were oral candidosis and proximal myopathy. The benefits of steroids when used according to defined guidelines were thought to outweigh toxicity.