Assessments of Soil physical properties and estimation of their associated variability are essential for making site-specific decisions on soil and crop management This study examined the spatial variability of soil hydro-physical properties and variance structure at Sector F1 of the Jibia Irrigation project Katsina State, Nigeria. Grid sampling technique was used to obtain one hundred and forty-four (144) soil samples from 206 ha of land using Google earth. The grids were drawn using Google earth software at intervals of 150 m x 150 m. Surface soil samples (0 - 20 cm) were collected at grid intersection points. The collected soil samples were air-dried and passed through a 2mm sieve, and analyzed using standard laboratory procedures for physical parameters. The ArcGIS software package 10.3 was used to model the variance structure of Sand, Silt, Clay, Bulk density, Particle density, Percent total porosity and Organic Matter (OM). Results obtained revealed that the coefficient of variation (CV) ranged from 5.724% in particle density to 109% in clay. The Semivariogram showed that the range of spatial dependence varied from 0.342m for (Dry mean weight diameter) to 9.3m (Organic matter) for all measured soil properties. High Spatial dependency ratios were observed for Bulk density, Sand, Silt and clay contents. Particle density exhibited moderate spatial dependency (Nugget to sill ratio 0.25 – 0.75%). Wet Mean weight diameter and organic matter content have a weak spatial dependency. The results indicated that sandy textured soils dominated the greater part of the study area with low to moderate organic matter content. The soils being sandy-dominated has a high infiltration rate and low ability to retain moisture and nutrients were observed as the major characteristics of the soil of the study area.

Dietary diversity became a global concern in improving health conditions through the habit of food group consumption by adding health dimension to the issue of food calorie consumption. Access to nutritionally adequate and good quality diet is essential to human health, productivity and work output. However, despite the various concerns by governments all over the world on ensuring that every household can at least provide three square meals per day, food insecurity continues to be a major development problem across the globe. This study assessed the effect of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on households’ dietary diversity in Jos Metropolis, Plateau State, Nigeria. A multistage sampling technique was used to select 265 households. Data was collected using well-structured questionnaire. The analytical techniques were; Descriptive statistics, Dietary Diversity index and Z-Statistics Test. Gender, age, household size, education, marital status, cooperative membership and access to credit were the socioeconomic characteristics described. Result indicate that 86% of the households had low food dietary diversity while 14% of the households had high food dietary diversity before and after the pandemic lockdown. Similarly, 18% of the households had low calorie consumption while 82% of the households had high dietary diversity before and after the pandemic lockdown. Cereals, legumes/grains, oils/fat, roots and tubers, sugar and honey and meats were the most common food consumed by the households daily before and after the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Result further indicate that the pandemic lockdown had effect on the dietary diversity and food consumption patterns of the urban households. It can be concluded that the understanding of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown on dietary diversity and food consumption patterns of households is important in developing policy measures such as social safety nets, home feeding programmes, the school feeding programme, conditional cash transfers schemes and improved marketing channels that will help mitigate against households falling into food insecurity during similar pandemic in the future.

The world population increasingly consumes about 300million tonnes of meat up to 2018. As this trend continues due to the increasing world population, plastic becomes necessary to preserve meat, required to meet its corresponding demands. Plastics in the meat industry were of immense benefits that have turned into an environmental burden. This is because they protect meat and other products from spoilage but contain many contaminants in the form of microplastics (MPs) additives and trapped carbons. These contaminants significantly contribute to the health risks meat pose and other global environmental concerns. A further concern is that consumers may likely not be aware of the safety risks of these MPs and their additives. Educating the meat consumers through proper labeling of the plastic packaging with straightforward and understandable terms for MPs migratory possibilities rather than industrial terminologies may likely guide the consumer against MPs consumption.

The farmers in most regions of Pakistan are heavily reliant on traditional farming approaches all year round and tend to cultivate exhaustive crops like wheat, cotton, maize, and sugarcane in most areas of the country. Consistently adopting this system leads to depleting the soil fertility status, which they overcome by instigating an uneconomical way of using excessive chemical fertilizers to maximize crop yields. These fertilizers are truly acidic and adversely affect soil health. Adopting sustainable farming approaches by the incorporation of legumes into the farming system with an integrated nutrient supply restores soil fertility and maintains the sustainability of the agro-ecosystem. A field experiment was performed to determine the significance of the integrated source of nutrient management on the growth and yield of sole and mixed cultures of sorghum and mungbean crops in areas with moisture regimes. The fertility treatments applied to the sole and intercrops of sorghum and mung-bean in a given sequence; i) Control, ii) Compost @ 10 t/ha, iii) FYM @ 20 t/ha, iv) NP @ 40 kg N + 30 kg P2O5 ha-1, v) ½ of recommended Compost @ 5 t/ha + ½ of recommended NP @ 20 kg N & 15 kg P2O5 ha-1, vi) ½ of recommended FYM @ 10 t/ha + ½ of recommended NP @ 20 kg N & 15 kg P2O5 ha-1. The sole crop of mungbean gave a maximum grain yield of 2229.1 kg/ha over an intercrop of 1779.7 kg/ha. Similarly, the highest grain yield of 2779.8 kg/ha of sorghum was obtained in sole culture over its intercrop of 2150.9 kg/ha. The interaction effect of cropping pattern and fertility treatments showed that sorghum and mungbean gave significant results for growth and yield parameters where a combined dose of organic & mineral fertilizers were provided in comparison to the plots where these fertilizers were applied in split doses.

The research was conducted in the years of 2020-2021 during the growing seasons such as 2021A started from September 2020 till the end of January 2021 and 2021 B started from February till end of June 2021, in Busogo sector, Musanze District, Northern Province. The purpose of this project was to assess the impact of fertilization and drying methods such as sun drying, dry shelter and kitchen drying on aflatoxin contamination in maize before and after harvesting. The area from which this project was conducted was chosen due to the availability of a lot of number of maize growers who cultivate them not only for consumption but also for trade purpose either processed or non-processed. During this study, a total of twenty-four samples were collected, examined and evaluated for aflatoxin levels in both seasons. In the season 2021A and 2021B sample collection equivalent to twelve in each season was done then dried them within 30 days by using different drying methods such as dry shelter, kitchen drying, sun drying. Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with four treatment of fertilizer combination in four replications was used in this study and all experimental plots were planted with one maize variety (H628) purchased from Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board. Except samples from maize cultivated without fertilizer, level of aflatoxin infection was found to be higher 10 Parts per billion. The East African countries community standard limit of 10 parts per billion which indicate a health risk to the consumer, when comparing the three drying methods employed in this study, the kitchen drying method produced lower levels of aflatoxin (1.6 parts per billion) than the dry shelter (3.2 parts per billion) and sun drying methods (2.9 parts per billion), samples taken from the control plot (T4) stands for no fertilizer application resulted greater levels of aflatoxin with an average of 25.75 prts per billion compared to other treatments which yielded aflatoxin levels of at lower than 10 parts per billion. The use of kitchen drying can be recommended as well as mixture of both organic and inorganic fertilizers when growing maize in order to reduce the level of aflatoxin.

Honey, bee venom, royal jelly, pollen, propolis and other bee products are natural products that are used to protect and maintain human health, to create a strong and dynamic health condition, and used as a ethnopharmacological medicine in the therapy of some illness. The use of different bee products to strengthen the immune system is still very common today. In this study, it was aimed to determine the in vitro effects of royal jelly samples collected from Sivas province in HUVEC cell culture conditions by determining the healing endothelial damage. In this context, royal jelly samples were obtained from the province of Sivas, where beekeeping is carried out intensively and successfully, in the 2022 harvest period. The effect of royal jelly extracts on the cell proliferation of endothelial cell culture was investigated. Repair of endothelial cell damage, cell growth and development and migration values were measured using the HUVEC cell line, and the data were evaluated with SPSS, GraphPad, ImageJ programs. Although there were significantly important increases in cell growth, development and cell viability values in HUVEC cells treated with different doses of royal jelly at the end of 24 and 48 hours, no statistically significant difference was found in terms of cell migration ratio compared to the control group.

Sorghum is one of the major staple crops grown in the poorest and most food-insecure regions of Ethiopia. Sorghum production is predominantly based on local seeds with limited use of commercial fertilizer or other chemicals. This study is therefore aimed to demonstrate the improved sorghum variety with its improved management practices and to assess farmers’ and extension workers’ reactions. The newly released variety of Beletew was evaluated with the variety of Melkam. The experiments were implemented using a simple plot design with farmers’ fields as a replicate. The result revealed that in both locations, the studied varieties showed nonsignificant variation in grain yield. Besides, all the participant farmers were agreed that the variety Beletew had compacted panicle, a larger number of spikes per panicle, stayed green character and yellow seed color. Similarly, about 78.3% and 65.6% of the participant farmers from Efratana gidim and Ensaro Districts respectively agreed that the variety Beletew had a larger panicle size than the variety Melkam and expected higher grain yields from it. Therefore based on the grain yield performance of the result of farmers’ evaluation, the new variety of Beletew was recommended to be pre-scale on a wider scale to sorghum-growing lowland areas as an alternative shortmatured varieties.

This study was carried out to examine the prevalence of AFM1 contamination across different areas of Chattogram, Bangladesh, and to assess the level of AFM1 in raw milk samples from various dairy farms. A cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the farming standards of three different Chattogram neighborhoods—Bakalia, Khulshi, and Pahartali—and to ascertain the amount of AFM1 in milk. In the study location, 30 commercial dairy farms were randomly chosen, and data on farming methods, milk production techniques, and knowledge of aflatoxin contamination were gathered. Using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) method, collected milk samples (n = 90) were examined for the presence of AFM1. The farms produced 71.67±14.71 liters of milk on average every day, which was primarily supplied to dairy processing plants. For feeding the cows, all farms used concentrates and forage.  The mean concentration of AFM1 in milk samples collected from Bakalia was higher (190.00±120.87 ng/L) than that in milk samples collected from the Khulshi (108.44±66.19 ng/L) and Pahartali (189.25±160.78 ng/L). The overall prevalence of AFM1 was 43% (N=39) of the total examined samples. A total of 69% (N=27) and 5% (N=2) of AFM1 positive samples exceeded the European Union Regulation (50 ng/L) and BSTI/BFSA regulations (500 ng/L) respectively. There was a significant difference in the occurrence of AFM1 in Bakalia regarding Khulshi and Pahartali. This research will aid in measuring the AFM1 content in raw milk and helping to address public health issues.

Paucity of knowledge on resistant variety, high yield loss ranging from 32- 57% and dearth of knowledge on management of Alternaria leaf spot has been the major concerns in radish production in the world. Our study will aid in multiplication and standardization of the germane variety of radish resistant to Alternaria leaf spot disease so as to escalate the production, productivity, and the competitiveness in the domestic as well as in the international market. Hence, this experiment was rendered to screen the radish genotypes against Alternaria leaf spot disease in Western Nepal in 2021. Seven genotypes namely Sparkle white F1 hybrid, Korean cross, Palak-patta 35, Pyuthane red, 40 days, Geeta 33, and Mino early were used as the treatment and experiment was laid out in one factorial RCBD design. Each treatment was assigned with 8 plants for observation with 3 replications per treatment. Parameters like days to appearance of disease, incidence of disease on seedling, disease severity (3 scorings), mean score of disease, mean AUDPC and reaction of genotypes were measured during the experiment. Our study unveiled highly significant result for the days to appearance of disease, disease severity, mean score of disease and AUDPC among the genotypes of radish. Alternaria leaf spot first appeared in Pyuthane red (18.33 days) while appeared late in Mino early. Disease severity was found harsh in 40 days at each scoring (57.33, 64.67 and 70.33 respectively); on the contrary severity was minor in Sparkle white at each scoring (26.67, 35 and 44.17 respectively). Similarly, the highest MDS (3.4) and AUDPC (449.8) was found in 40 days, whereas the lowest MDS (1.7) and AUDPC (246.5) was observed in Sparkle white. Ultimately, it is contended that 40 days was found to be moderately susceptible variety while other varieties were found to be moderately resistant.

Environmental awareness is increasing around the world, however, the production of eco-friendly food products has started to gain importance in order to protect nature and reduce dependence on it. In addition, due to the awareness of people, it increases the demand for healthy foods. As a result, organic farming is developing and the number of organic product farms is increasing. Organic aquaculture products have also started to take their place in this big market. Although many of the rules and standards applied in organic agriculture are similar, the rules of organic aquaculture products contain differences on the basis of species. Significant progress has been made with the organic aquaculture production standards determined by international organizations and each country. Organic aquaculture defines organic aquatic organisms that are fed with organic feeds approved by authorized organizations and grown in accordance with all organic farming standards. The main principles of organic culture; health, ecology, fairness and care. Therefore, these basic principles are adhered to when determining organic aquaculture standards. In this review, general and current information were given about the organic aquaculture and organic feeds.