January 2013

Whatever be the crops, after harvesting the residue left in the field poses a major problem as removing it requires manpower and money. In some places farmers simply burn the dried leaves, stalk in the field itself as it is an easy option. But over time this practice makes the land barren and kills several beneficial organisms that aid good growth.

Cost reduction

“And today with the cost of fertilizers hitting the roof it will be advisable if farmers can effectively use these wastes to make some sort of manure like vermicompost and put it back to the soil. By doing so expenses can be reduced and soil fertility be upgraded,” says Dr. V. Kantharaju, Programme Coordinator, Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Gulbarga, Karnataka. A group of farmers from different villages were selected and given training by the KVK staff on vermi composting methods.

Awareness

The farmers were also made aware on the importance of natural farming through vermicomposting methods and how this could help them cut down expenses in buying fertilizers. Since this method helped them save some money several farmers willingly took it up. “Also the income obtained from such activity can be reinvested by the farmer in enhancing his farm resources and infrastructure for higherreturn. He can go for crop diversification and better income,” says Dr. Kantharaju. “For farmers, seeing is believing. When they heard about other farmers doing well in this line, they started visiting our KVK office and expressed willingness to try the same. “Today we have been able to help such farmers in setting up their own small vermicomposting units and manufacture their own inputs,” says Dr. Kantharaju.

Loan

A dryland farmer, Mr. Shivanand in the region who underwent a similar training, started his own unit in small way. In due course, with help from KVK staff, he got a loan of Rs.4 lakh from a local bank. “I constructed 48 pits from the loan amount and today am able to produce 100 tonnes of compost a year. 50 tonnes was used for my personal use and the remaining sold at Rs.300 per quintal. The worms were also sold for Rs. 300 a kg,” says the enterprising farmer.

Production doubled

Within a year he doubled his production to nearly 200 tonnes. He also started to enrich his compost with neem cake, Trichoderma, Pseudomonas, Rhizobium, and Azospirillum. The farmer also developed a diversified cropping pattern using the vermicompost from his own unit. He planted papaya in five acres, musk melon in one acre, and cucumber in some remaining area. With continuous guidance from the expert team who periodically visited him, he earned Rs. 3 lakh from papaya, Rs. 1.5 lakh from water melon, Rs. 1.5 lakh from musk melon, and Rs. 1 lakh from cucumber. He constructed a new home, purchased land worth Rs. 5 lakh from the income. He has also employed about 10 permanent and temporary labour to look after the daily work in the production unit.

Better revenue

The success of Mr. Shivanand spread like wild fire and several people are visiting his farm to learn how he has been able to succeed in terms of revenue.

Window closes on new theory of particle physics

On November 12, at the first day of the Hadron Collider Physics Symposium at Kyoto, Japan, researchers presented a handful of results that constrained the number of hiding places for a promising new theory. Members of the team from the LHCb detector on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment located on the border of France and Switzerland provided evidence of a very rare particle-decay. The rate of the decay process was in fair agreement with an older theory of particles’ properties, called the Standard Model (SM), and deviated from the new theory, called Supersymmetry. “Theorists have calculated that, in the Standard Model, this decay should occur about 3 times in every billion total decays of the particle,” announced Pierluigi Campana, LHCb spokesperson. “This first measurement gives a value of around 3.2 per billion, which is in very good agreement with the prediction.” The result was presented at the 3.5-sigma confidence level, which corresponds to an error rate of 1-in-2,000. While not strong enough to claim discovery, it is valid as evidence. The particle, called a B_s meson, decayed from a bottom antiquark and strange quark pair into two muons. According to the SM, this is a complex and indirect decay process: the quarks exchange a W boson particle, turn into a top-antitop quark pair, which then decays into a Z boson or a Higgs boson. The boson then decays to two muons.

This indirect decay is called a quantum loop, and advanced theories like Supersymmetry predict new, short-lived particles to appear in such loops. The LHCb, which detected the decays, reported no such new particles. At the same time, in June 2011, the LHCb had announced that it had spotted hints of supersymmetric particles at 3.9-sigma. Thus, scientists will continue to conduct tests until they can stack 3.5 million-to-1 odds for or against Supersymmetry to close the case. As Prof. Chris Parkes, spokesperson for the UK participation in the LHCb experiment, told BBC News: “Supersymmetry may not be dead but these latest results have certainly put it into hospital.” The symposium, which concluded on November 16, also saw the release of the first batch of data generated in search of the Higgs boson since the initial announcement on July 4 this year. The LHC can’t observe the Higgs boson directly because it quickly decays into lighter particles. So, physicists count up the lighter particles and try to see if some of those could have come from a momentarily existent Higgs.

Still early days

These are still early days, but the data seems consistent with the predicted properties of the elusive particle, giving further strength to the validity of the SM. Dr. Rahul Sinha, a physicist at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, said, “So far there is nothing in the Higgs data that indicates that it is not the Higgs of Standard Model, but a conclusive statement cannot be made as yet.” Scientists, however, are disappointed as there are fewer channels for new physics to occur. While the SM is fairly consistent with experimental findings, it is still unable to explain some fundamental problems. Commenting on the results, Dr. G. Rajasekaran, scientific adviser to the India-based Neutrino Observatory being built at Theni, asked for patience. “Supersymmetry implies the existence of a whole new world of particles equalling our known world. Remember, we took a hundred years to discover the known particles starting with the electron.” With each such tightening of the leash, physicists return to the drawing board and consider new possibilities, apart from hoping that the initial results aren’t accurate enough. “We now plan to continue analysing data to improve the accuracy of this measurement and others which could show effects of new physics,” said Campana.

Go Back To Main Page