Science Nots

WORLD CENTRES OF PRIMARY DIVERSITY OF DOMESTICATED PLANTS Origin of crop plants The history of crops and man reveals that the evolution of man and the evolution of crop plants went hand in hand. Man has become so utterly dependent on plants such that the plants have 'domesticated' him (Harlan, 1975). The origins of crop plants and their history reveal that the evolution of crop plants is a gradual and slow process rather than sudden and rapid. As such, some cultivated plants differ very little from their original wild relatives, while others differ enormously from their progenitors. To know precisely about the present day crop plants there needs a thorough understanding of what kinds of plants did man eat before today's crops were available? What were the conditions that prompted him to domesticate the plants? How was his life before agriculture? To have a rough idea about these questions from the hunter man to the present day civilized agricultural society...

O RIGINS OF AGRICULTURE A brief outline of the origins or the beginnings of agriculture, the starting point of all economic botany, in the form of crop plants and their domestication will help to understand the scope of the subject in greater detail. A Sumerian harvester's sickle made  from baked clay (ca. 3000 BC). Man has originated on earth some two million years ago of which the present day civilized man dates back only to an infinitely small fraction of time as some 10,000 years back and the rest of the time he has been a hunter-gatherer. Later, man learned out of necessity, obviously, to cultivate certain plants and food production became more efficient with the origins of agriculture; civilization of man went hand in hand with new techniques of cultivation and bringing more plants into cultivation.   Since its development roughly 10,000 years ago, agriculture has expanded vastly in geographical coverage and yields. Throughout this expansion, ne...

Sustainable Development : Basic Concept Sustainable development focuses on improving the quality of life for all the Earth’s citizens without increasing the use of natural resources beyond the capacity of the environment to supply them indefinitely. The sustainable development concept begins with an understanding that inaction has consequences and that we must find innovative ways to change institutional structures and influence individual behaviour. There is growing understanding of the interconnection between global ecological, economic and political/ social systems and it has become important to consider economic prosperity in an integrated way with social development and environmental protection. Traditional decision-making, which focused primarily on social and/ or economic considerations, with environmental issues usually neglected unless the policy issue specifically pertained to the environment, has been replaced with an integrated decision-making approach, in which en...