ICAR-IASRI Newsletter, April-June, 2013

Abstract

The first Supercomputing Hub for Indian Agriculture- ASHOKA (Advanced Supercomputing Hub for OMICS Knowledge in Agriculture) has been established at IASRI. Goat Microsatellite Database (GoSatDb), a web based relational database of microsatellite markers present in the whole genome sequence of goat has been developed that allows microsatellite search using multiple parameters and the location of the marker on the chromosome. It is available at http://cabindb.iasri.res.in/goat/. In agricultural field experiments, neighbour effects are very common phenomena. Neighbour effects may not only arise from the immediate neighbouring units but also it may extend further as with the spread of inoculum in disease screening trials. To deal with such situations, second order neighbour balanced block designs have been defined and constructed wherein every treatment has every other treatment appearing as both left and right neighbour up to distance two (leaving one plot) a constant number of times. Under the study on Stochastic Volatility (SV) models through particle filtering, the method of extracting more information from the logarithmic of square observations was studied for the SV model. The correlation between the transition and measurement errors was also studied to have an insight into the relation between state and observation. State space form of SV models where the errors are made independent by making some changes in the two equations was formulated. Comparison of modelling and forecasting performance of SV vis-à-vis GARCH was also carried out. An econometric study was undertaken to examine irrigation development, structure and determinants of water markets to assess equity, efficiency and reliability in water use under different forms of water markets in North-Western Rajasthan. It was observed that three-fifths of net sown area and two-thirds of gross sown area in North-Western region were irrigated. Although, the region is dominated by canal irrigation, the growth in canal irrigated area was poor in the region during 2000-01 to 2008-09. The water markets are emerging due to shortage of canal water and saline groundwater in most of the deeper aquifers.