Chapter-15: Improvement in Food Resources Notes

Chapter-15: Improvement in Food Resources
Notes
Agriculture and animal husbandry provide us all our food from plant and animal sources
respectively.
Improvement in food variety

 Capacity of producing crop plants and managing livestock should be increased
through various efforts like green revolution and white revolution. But this should be
done by employing sustainable practices without destroying our environment.
 Improving the financial status of people, especially those involved in agricultural
practices is essential to provide food security to everyone.
 The optimum requirement of temperature, water, light and other conditions vary for
different crops.
 Kharif crops like paddy and cotton are grown in rainy season whereas Rabi crops like
wheat and mustard are grown in winter season.
 Crop variety improvement, crop production improvement and crop protection
management help to increase the crop yields.
 Hybridisation and genetic modification techniques introduce the useful characters into
crop plants.
 It is desirable to develop crops that can survive and give good yields in different
climatic conditions and areas.
Desirable characteristics of crop plants:

 Increased yield
 Improved quality (such as baking quality in wheat, protein quality in pulse) etc.
 Resistance to biotic and abiotic factors, especially those harming the plant
 Reduction in duration of plant maturity.
 Broad range adaptability of the crop plant under various environmental conditions.
 Variety improvement may be done for one or several of these characteristics
In India, the land holding, financial conditions and use of modern technologies vary among
different farmers. Hence the inputs of farmers are also different, leading to different
production practices and yields.
The sixteen nutrients required by plants are obtained through air, water and soil.
(i) There are 9 macronutrients. Examples: Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium,
magnesium, sulphur, carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.
(ii) There are 7 micronutrients. Examples: Iron, manganese, boron, zinc, copper,
molybdenum and chlorine.
(ii) Air supplies carbon and oxygen and hydrogen comes from water
Animal husbandry: Rearing of animals to meet the food requirement of increasing
population.
Due to the food needs of the ever-increasing human population, animal husbandry, especially
of cattle, goat, sheep, poultry and fish, is gaining a lot of importance.
Cattle Farming:
 In India, cows and buffaloes are used for draught labour and producing milk and are
called draught animals and milch animals respectively.
 Long lactation period is a desirable quality in milch animals.
 Exotic breeds showing long lactation is cross bred with local breeds showing
resistance to diseases to obtain high quality breeds.
 for good health and milk production, proper cattle management is required such as
shelter feeding, breeding and disease control.
 The cattle shelter should be well-ventilated, hygienic and Cattle dry food should
include roughage and concentrates in balanced amounts and are required for the
healthy maintenance as well as milk production of the cattle.
 Cattle diseases are caused by external and internal parasites as well as by bacteria and
viruses. These affect the health as well as milk production of the animals and can be
largely controlled through vaccinations.
Poultry:
 Poultry farming targets egg production and broiler production for chicken meat.
 Cross-breeding is done between the Indian and foreign breeds of poultry to obtain
improved varieties containing desirable traits such as tolerance to high temperature,
dwarf broiler parent, low maintenance requirements and reduction in size of the
layers.
 The shelter, feeding and other requirements of broilers and layers differ from each
other.
 The diet of broilers is planned with the aim of achieving good growth rate and quality
of carcass whereas the diet of layers is aimed to achieve large number and high
quality of eggs.
 Broiler diet is rich in proteins and vitamins, along with the required amount of fat.
 The poultry shelter should be hygienic, well-lighted and maintained at appropriate
temperatures.
 Poultry need to be protected from various diseases caused by bacteria, fungi, viruses,
parasites and nutritional deficiencies, through proper treatment, sanitation and
vaccination.
Fish Production:
 In fish production, both the true fish as well as shell fish are obtained from marine
or fresh water through capture fishing or culture fishery.
 India's marine fishery resources are the vast coastlines and extensive seas; the
freshwater resources are canals, ponds, reservoirs and rivers whereas the brackish
water fishery resources are estuaries and lagoons.
 In India, marine fishes such as pomfret, tuna, mackerel and sardines can be
locating through satellites and echo sounders and captured using fishing nets.
 Marine fish farming of high economic value fishes like mullets, oysters and
prawns are done in sea water.
 Freshwater fish production is mainly carried out through aquaculture. Composite
fish culture system is used commonly for fresh water fish farming. ln this svstem,
five or six fish species with different food habits are farmed together in a single
pond, so as to increase the yield of fish.
 Since high quality fish seed is not always available, fish are now-a-days bred
using hormonal stimulation thus ensuring continuous supply of the seed.
Bee-keeping:
 Bee-keeping is a low investment activity carried out by farmers to obtain honey
and wax.
 Apis cerana indica, Apis dorsata and Apis florae are the Indian bee varieties
whereas Apis mellifera is an Italian variety used for commercially producing
honey.
 The availability of sufficient amount of pasturage as well as the type of flowers
decide the quality of honey.

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Improvement in food variety

Desirable characteristics of crop plants:

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