Strategies for Enhancement in Food Production

Food is any substance that is provided in order to meet the body nutritional requirement.
 

Different types of Revolution

Blue Revolution –  Fish production.

Green Revolution – Food grains.

Red Revolution – Meat production.

Silver Fiber Revolution – Cotton production.

White Revolution – Milk/dairy production.

What is Animal Breeding? or What are different types of Breeding?

There are two different methods of animal breeding:

1. Inbreeding

2. Outbreeding
 

Inbreeding

Mating between the closely related individuals within the same breed for about 3 to 6 generations. Inbreeding raises the risks of different diseases as well as it decreases the chances of survival and reproduction among the produced offspring’s.

For example: Self-pollination in plants.

Fig.1 – Types of Breeding

Outbreeding

Breeding among the unrelated organisms, that is, they can be from same breed or different species of different breed is known as Outbreeding.

The types of Outbreeding are as follows:

• Outcrossing is the practice of mating animals of the same breed without any common ancestor up to 4-6 generations

• Cross Breeding involves mating between superior female of one breed with superior male of another breed

• Interspecific Hybridization is the mating between two different species. Both the parents are selected on the basis of some desirable characteristics
   

What is Animal Husbandry?

It is a science of managing and caring of farm animals by human beings. It is practiced to raise livestock for promoting desirable traits in animals for human welfare. (See Fig. 2)
 

What are different steps of Animal Husbandry?

• Feeding

• Breeding

• Maintaining hygiene

• Controlling diseases

• Storage and transport

• Marketing of animal products
   

What are the different types of management in Animal Husbandry?

1. Poultry Farm Management

It is a management of domesticated fowl for food and eggs. Fowls which are free of diseases are selected for breeding.

Common diseases of poultry include- Diarrhea, Upper Respiratory Diseases, Lameness etc.

2. Dairy Farm Management

It is the management of the animals for milk and milk products that can be further used for human consumption. Good quality breeds with high potential for milk yield is being considered for the management. Other criteria of choosing the breed is disease resistant variety.

3. Bee Keeping

The process of maintenance of honey bees for the production of honey is known as Bee keeping or apiculture. The most common species of bee that is used for apiculture is Apis Indica.

Points to remember during apiculture:

• Proper habitat of bees

• Seasonal management of bee hives

• Proper collection of honey as well as bee wax

Apiculture is useful to obtain honey and wax. Honey possess an antibacterial property.

4. Aquaculture/Pisciculture

Management of catching, processing as well as selling fishes such as Rohu, Catla, Hilsa etc is known as aquaculture or pisciculture. Due to more requirement of fishes, different methods are employed to promote pisciculture.

There are different methods of pisciculture:

• Polyculture is a method of culturing of different fishes together. Fishes with different feeding habits are kept together

• Monoculture is a method where single fish is kept in a pond

• Monosex Culture is a method of culturing of fish with single sex, that is, either male or female

Pisciculture is done to meet the food requirement as well as protein requirement of people.
 

Plant Breeding

Plant breeding is the manipulation of plant species in order to obtain desirable plant traits such as more yield, pest resistance, herbicide resistance etc. There are different methods to produce desired variety of plants. The most common method of plant breeding is hybridization. Hybridization is defined as the process of mixing of genome of two organisms to produce organism with new trait. Such plants with modified genome are known as transgenic plants.
 

Breeding for Disease Resistant Plants

Steps for breeding disease resistant plants:

• Selection of genome with disease resistant traits

• Mating of the selected parents

• Selection of superior hybrids

• Testing of the hybrid for superior variety

• Release of the new variety

Different superior varieties of Wheat, Brassica, rust are being obtained through plant breeding for desirable characteristics.
 

Mutational Breeding

It is one of the method of plant breeding that modifies base sequence/nucleotide sequence of a gene to obtain new traits other than those observed in parents. These mutations or changes are brought about either by chemicals or radiations such as X-rays.

For example: Mung bean variety is obtained through mutation. This variety is resistant to “yellow mosaic virus”.
 

Breeding to obtain Insect or Pest Resistant Variety

Insect or pest resistant plants are produced based on different strategies such as:

• They are modified in such a way that they become tasteless. So animals avoid eating these plants.

• They produce some toxins that paralyzed the infected insect.

• They are modified morphologically such as hairier, pointed leaves, odor etc.

Varieties of certain crop plants such as Tobacco, Potato, Okra are obtained through plant breeding.

Watch this Video for more reference