Search

Wetlands play a crucial role as ecosystems, supporting life on Earth by providing diverse habitats and essential ecological services. One such internationally significant wetland is the Vembanad Kol Wetland in Kerala, known for its unique natural or near-natural wetland type within the biogeographic region. The northern part of this wetland, known as Kole land experiences most fertile soil due to nutrient rich alluvium which gets deposited from rivers. Accurate delineating the boundaries of Kole lands has remained a challenge, for effective management and conservation efforts in the region. Without reliable spatial data, it is difficult to regulate land use activities, allocation of resources such as water, agricultural inputs, and infrastructure investments, prioritizing conservation efforts. So, this study aims to digitize kole lands by employing field surveys, stakeholder consultations and geospatial analysis techniques. All the 132 padasekhararams were digitized in GIS environment. The digitized north Kole land gives a area of 8084.60 hectares, resulting in a variation of 0.16%. Chazhur grama panchayath has the highest number of padasekhararams (22 Nos). Block-wise distribution of padasekhararam shows that in Anthikad block panchayath has the highest number of padasekhararams (50 Nos) with Arimbur gramapanchayath has the largest Kole area of 1142.7 ha. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

The world population is more than 8 billion and about 20-25 percent people does not have enough food to eat. It has been estimated that world as a whole more than 30-50 percent vegetables, fruits etc. are lost before it reaches to the consumers. To overcoming spoiling problems of vegetables and fruit; various preserving methods are used and renewable sources are best for this purpose by which we can save energy for preservation and keeping the product in their natural flavor by drying it. Drying is one of the oldest methods of preserving food. The solar drying system utilizes solar energy to heat air and to dry any food substance. It brings about a substantial reduction in weight, volume, minimizing packing, storage, and transportation costs, and enables storability of the product under ambient temperatures. This paper present the Construction of Continuous solar dryer which can be used for drying various fruits and vegetables products in rural areas under hygienic conditions. The Continues solar dryer was constructed consisting of a solar collector cum drying chamber. The overall dimension of the continues solar dryer is 1830x300x620mm and the drying chamber was painted black to absorb maximum solar radiations. The glass was covered, it permits the solar radiation into the system but resists flow of heat energy out of system and product were moving continually from inlet to outlet through chain conveyors. This chain conveyors was connected to the Rollers and the roller was connected to belt pully to reduction motor and VFD to control the chain conveyor from inlet to outlet to dry the product at required moisture content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...

Manual spading needs more labour, takes more time, high energy and cost per cultivable area. The depth of cut is also less in manual spading operation. Tractor operated spading machines have their own set of limitations in small fields, and their cost was also out of reach for small and marginal farmers. These factors lead to the development of a spading machine as an attachment to power tiller. Overall, the maximum field efficiency 87 per cent was achieved at the forward speed of 2.1 km h-1, when the depth of cut was 10 cm at 30° spade angle and 200 rpm crankshaft speed. The minimum fuel consumption 0.87 l h-1 was noticed at 1.5 km h-1 forward speed, 10 cm depth of operation and 100 rpm crankshaft speed respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...