How to preserve sugarcane juice for a year.

                How to preserve sugarcane juice for a year.

Indian summers are synonymous with tall glasses of cold sugarcane juice, a seasonal delicacy that disappears from the market all too soon. But sugarcane lovers take heart! 

A recent innovation could mean you can stock up your refrigerator with bottled sugarcane juice for up to a year. Rajgopal Irappa Patil has adapted technology that can help preserve sugarcane juice for 12 months without using any chemical preservatives. He says: “This technology leads to shelf-stable, ready-to-serve bottled sugarcane juice that is healthy and hygienic, especially when compared to what is offered by roadside vendors.” 

 The technology of Punjab Agricultural University involves a storage tank, a pasteurization system, and a homogeneous system (to add flavors). Natural flavoring agents, salts, and anti-oxidants (from natural ingredients such as mint, ginger, and lime) are added to the juice before it is bottled.

AGRIBUSINESS: New technology to keep fruits, vegetables fresh for 1,000 days.

AGRIBUSINESS: New technology to keep fruits, vegetables fresh for 1,000 days.While efforts are being made to reduce wastage of perishables via cold chain management, an Indian company has introduced 'Black Box' technology, which ensures the preservation of any agricultural commodity for 1,000 days. 

Sahil Peerzada and Sachin Adhikari of Viztar Agritech have tied up with Spain-based Nice Fruits to offer new technology in cold storage plants in the Indian subcontinent. Black Box is a unique technology developed by scientists in Spain. It can be easily set up in any factory or plant. Regular cold storage utilises nitrogen. 

However, in the Black Box system, there will be neither nitrogen nor any preservative. The stored commodities will have their natural content and nutrition value intact for 1,000 days.Fruits, vegetables, or meat, anything can be kept fresh for 1,000 days using Black Box.

Agribusiness:How to get small piglets to eat more feed.

Agribusiness:How to get small piglets to eat more feed.What influences feed intake of small piglets? Researchers from the Netherlands looked at the effects on feed intake and feeding behaviour of many aspects of feed in more detail. The scientists, attached to Wageningen University and Research, published about the research in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science. They describe a trial that tested the feeding behaviour of suckling piglets when different diets were supplied to them. The hypothesis of the study was that presentation of the feed in a more diverse form, by varying multiple sensory properties of the feed, stimulates pre-weaning feed intake. Stimulating solid feed intake in suckling piglets is important to facilitate the weaning transition, exemplified by the positive correlation between pre- and post-weaning feed intake. 2 different diets tested by piglets Piglets received ad libitum feed from 2 days of age in 2 feeders per pen (choice feeding set-up).Feed A was an experimental diet from the university’s Animal Nutrition Group. Extruder settings intendedly varied during production, resulting in differences in pellet texture, length and hardness to create diversity within feed A. Feed B is a commercial diet, called Baby Big XL, from Coppens Diervoeding in the Netherlands. Feed B was a 14-mm diameter pellet, with a length of 10-20 mm and a hardness of 6.8 kg.Feeding behaviour was studied by weighing feed remains and by live observations. Observations were also used to discriminate ‘eaters’ from ‘non-eaters’. In addition, eaters were grouped into different eater classes (i.e. good, moderate and bad). Provision of feed A and B increased pre-weaning feed intake by 50% compared to provision of feed A only (with and without additional flavours). Piglets receiving feed A and B had no overall preference in terms of feed intake for either feed A or B, indicating pre-weaning feed intake increased by an enhanced intake of both feeds. These results supported the researchers’ hypothesis that the more diverse the feeds provided in terms of sensory properties (e.g. ingredient composition, texture), the greater the intake will be. The reason for this is expected to be sensory-specific satiety and/or piglets’ intrinsic motivation to explore.

AGRIBUSINESS: Print-Arome for flavor imprinting.

AGRIBUSINESS: Print-Arome for flavour imprinting. Print-Arome is flavor formulated with essential oils.Dosed in the sows and post-weaning diets generate an “imprinting” effect in the piglets. This effect familiarizes the piglets with its scent and facilitates the introduction to solid food. As a result, it increases feed intake, weight gain and reduces health problems associated with early weaning. It improves feed intake by 95% while it reduces stress by 92%. Print-Arome.

AGRIBUSINESS: Expanding the reach of flavour imprinting in piglets.

AGRIBUSINESS: Expanding the reach of flavour imprinting in piglets. An aroma, based on essential oils, is capable of generating an imprinting effect in piglets that can boost their introduction to solid feed after weaning and improves their performance. Combining this with spray dried porcine plasma could bring even further benefits post-weaning. Early weaned piglets are subject to a great deal of stress and have to adapt abruptly to a new diet, which delivers a great physiological challenge. As a result, during the first week after weaning, piglets typically have a low feed intake and a growth decrease that has an impact on the animal’s gut morphology, increasing the risk of post-weaning diarrhoea and consequently affecting the animals subsequent performance. Supplementing sow and post-weaning diets with Print-Arome, a flavour formulated with essential oils, has an imprinting effect in piglets. This effect familiarises the piglets with its scent and facilitates the introduction to solid feed. The transfer of dietary information from mother to offspring with the essential oils flavour has been proven to successfully improve feed intake and weight gain of piglets at weaning. Likewise, spray dried porcine plasma (SDPP) is also a common feed ingredient used for similar objectives; included in weaning diets to improve feed intake, post-weaning performance and reduce diarrhoea incidence.

Agribusiness: A good start is vital for healthy piglets.

Agribusiness: A good start is vital for healthy piglets.Raising healthy piglets from start through weaning is a challenge not to be underestimated, impacting performance and health at later stages. Sudden change in dietary regimens and management at weaning puts a heavy burden on the animal’s immature digestive system. This leads to a disturbed immune system and microbiota, and increased susceptibility to diseases. Stress already starts at birth, a crucial period filled with risks: piglets must be born strong and healthy and remain that way. Once born, piglets encounter several hurdles: piglets suffer from all kinds of pathogenic challenges with an immature immune system. There is a significant and immediate demand on the gut to digest and absorb nutrients efficiently to maintain a high growth rate. Intestinal epithelial cell integrity is of prime importance considering that this epithelium is responsible for absorption of water, electrolytes, and nutrients. Not to forget the beneficial microbiome that must establish itself as soon as possible to guarantee a fully functioning intestinal tract. Once the piglet could manage these hurdles, another event, considered as a major stressor, takes place: weaning. Although technological improvements in housing, nutrition, and management are available to minimise the stress, piglets are weaned at unphysiologically early ages. The sudden change in dietary regimens at weaning places a heavy burden on the immature digestive system of the piglet. The gastro-intestinal tract is affected by a change in microbiome, mechanical damage, and inflammation as reaction to the stresses (social, nutritional, handling) of weaning. The effects are aggravated by the immature immune system which has not developed a full response to cope with pathogens, resulting in disease . It is clear impairment of the normal gut and immune function, leading to diarrhoea and even death, which needs to be avoided.

AGRIBUSINESS: Heat stress in pigs and its effect on the gut.

AGRIBUSINESS:    Heat stress in pigs and its effect on the gut. 


 Heat Stress is a physiological response to high environmental temperatures, where the animal is out of its thermo-neutral zone and can no longer effectively regulate its body temperature. Consequently, animal health, well-being and performance are negatively affected.

 

RESEARCH: Eyes of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease( CJD) patients show evidence of prions.

RESEARCH: Eyes of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease patients show evidence of prions. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a rare, degenerative, fatal brain disorder. It affects about one person in every one million per year worldwide; in the United States there are about 350 cases per year. CJD belongs to a family of human and animal diseases known as the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) or prion diseases. A prion—derived from “protein” and “infectious”—causes CJD in people and TSEs in animals. Spongiform refers to the characteristic appearance of infected brains, which become filled with holes until they resemble sponges when examined under a microscope. CJD is the most common of the known human TSEs. CJD usually appears in later life and runs a rapid course. The typical onset of symptoms occurs at about age 60, and about 70 percent of individuals die within one year. In the early stages of the disease, people may have failing memory, behavioral changes, lack of coordination, and visual disturbances. As the illness progresses, mental deterioration becomes pronounced and involuntary movements, blindness, weakness of extremities, and coma may occur. There are three major categories of CJD. 1)In sporadic (sCJD), the disease appears even though the person has no known risk factors for the disease. This is by far the most common type of CJD and accounts for at least 85 percent of cases. 2)In hereditary CJD, the person may have a family history of the disease and test positive for a genetic mutation associated with CJD. About 10 to 15 percent of cases of CJD in the United States are hereditary. 3) in acquired CJD, the disease is transmitted by exposure to brain or nervous system tissue, usually through certain medical procedures. There is no evidence that CJD is contagious through casual contact with someone who has CJD. Since CJD was first described in 1920, fewer than one percent of cases have been acquired CJD. A type of CJD called variant CJD (or vCJD) can be acquired by eating meat from cattle affected by a disease similar to CJD called bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or, commonly, “mad cow” disease. A new study, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine with colleagues at the National Institutes of Health and UC San Francisco, report finding tell-tale evidence of the condition's infectious agent in the eyes of deceased sCJD patients, making the eye a potential source for both early CJD detection and prevention of disease transmission. In the November 20 issue of the journal mBio, co-corresponding author Christina J. Sigurdson, DVM, PhD, professor of pathology at UC San Diego and UC Davis, and colleagues discovered high levels of prions in the eyes of 11 deceased patients, all with confirmed sCJD. Almost half of sCJD patients develop visual disturbances, and its a known fact that the disease can be unknowingly transmitted through corneal graft transplantation.

DISEASE TRANSMISSION AND BIOSECURITY PROTOCOLS.

BIOSECURITY.  Following simple but specific protocols everyday to positively influence animal health, food safety and public health.

 What are the basic protocols in biosecurity? READ

 Biosecurity basically entails, prevention of pathogens from entering premises to ensure there is no disease incidence, and curtail spread of diseases in cases of outbreaks.

  Pathogens are disease causing microorganisms that usually have devastating effect on animals, resulting in decreased production and death in severe cases.  Pathogens can be bacteria, viruses, fungi and prion.

.  The animal kingdom is riddled with several pathogens that wreck havoc on these animals irrespective of specie.  These pathogens are also of importance to man, especially when these cause zoonotic diseases.

 Zoonotic diseases are spread from animals to man, and sometimes there is a reverse zoonoses where man actually spreads the disease to their animals.

  Route of transmission.  The basic routes are:  Direct contact.  Aerosol.  Oral.  Formites.  Vector borne  Zoonoses.  Reproduction.  Environmental contamination.

  Mode of transmission.  Direct contact ;disease spread by contact with open wounds, mucous membrane of an infected animal or its secretions/tissue fluids.

Disease can also spread through contact with reproductive fluid(blood, urine and saliva) during breeding, or from mother to offspring.

  Aerosol; droplets containing the pathogenic agent travel in air and are inhaled as respiratory droplets by animals

 Oral; ingestion of the pathogenic agent from contaminated feed ,chewing/licking contaminated objects in environment and water.

 Formites; spread of the pathogen through contact with inanimate objects contaminated by infected animals.

Man can act as formites by transferring these pathogens in through soiled boots, gloves or tools.

AGRIBUSINESS: GlobalG.A.P. as a Way to Safer Food and Safer Food as a Way to a Better Business.

AGRIBUSINESS: GlobalG.A.P. as a Way to Safer Food and Safer Food as a Way to a Better Business.

An international study conducted by Unilever reveals that more than a third of consumers (33%) are now choosing to buy from companies they believe are producing in accordance with ecological principles, and the majority of consumers nowadays expect that products they buy fulfill high social, ecological and ethical standards (source: Unilever). 

 When buying, consumers are wondering: 'Is this product good for my family and me? Is this produced in a healthy way? Although the label claims it is organic, is it really? Is it possible for a false statement to be on a label? Is the price I’m paying justified? Although there are already many certificates that seem to guarantee the origin of the product, there is only one which has definitive rules for growers to follow. 

The GLOBALG.A.P. is a food safety standard developed to regulate food production processes from micro to macro level of producing. GLOBALG.A.P. certificate can provide the customer a complete transparency of the food production process, from the farm to its final product.

AGRIBUSINESS: How to revive a new born calf.

AGRIBUSINESS: How to revive a new born calf. Calves are at a relatively high risk of mortality as soon as they are born. When they hit the ground, and their navel cord is severed, they need to obtain oxygen through the lungs. They do this by starting to breath. However sometimes a difficult or prolonged calving can result in trauma or a weak calf, and they need a bit of help kicking it into gear. A newborn calf's nostrils and mouth are covered with mucous which can affect their breathing, and there are multiple ways a farmer can help to clear them. 1) Stimulate the nostrils to make the calf cough or sneeze. If you tickle the calf’s nostrils with something small, soft and clean you can bring about a cough or a sneeze to clear away the mucous. Usually this is done with straw or a gloved fingertip. Be careful though - if it isn’t clean, small enough to enter the nostril or soft enough, it could injure or inflame the nose. 2) Cold stimulation of the calf. Pouring cold water over the head or into the ear of a newborn calf can bring about head shakes and coughing to clear fluid from their throat. This sudden gush of cold water will come as a shock and is a pretty abrupt welcome into the world for a newborn calf . 3) Aspiration: You can inflate the lungs of a newborn calf by aspiration in a few ways. One way is to insert a soft tube into the nostril. Another is by placing a gas mask over the snout of the calf. This practice prompts the calf to snort like the straw method, however is comes with the added benefit of having the added momentum of a lungful of air. AGRIBUSINESS: How to revive a new born calf.

RESEARCH: Dry-cured ham bones -- a source of heart-healthy peptides.

RESEARCH: Dry-cured ham bones -- a source of heart-healthy peptides.Drinking bone broth is a recent diet fad that proponents claim fights inflammation, eases joint pain and promotes gut health. Simmering animal bones in water releases collagen and other proteins into the broth that may have health benefits, although more research is needed to validate these claims. Now, a new study in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry has shown that ham bones contain peptides that could have cardioprotective effects. During cooking and digestion, proteins from animal bones can be broken down into smaller pieces, or peptides, that have different properties than the intact protein. For example, some peptides from collagen act as antioxidants or inhibitors of disease-related enzymes. To see if Spanish dry-cured ham bones could be a source of beneficial peptides, Leticia Mora and colleagues ground up the bones and simulated conditions of cooking and human digestion. Then, they examined whether the bone samples could block the activities of several enzymes involved in cardiovascular disease. The researchers found that the bone peptides, most of which were derived from collagen and hemoglobin proteins, inhibited the enzymes even after heating and simulated digestion. In fact, these treatments released additional bioactive peptides, suggesting that the use of ham bones to make broths and stews could have a positive impact on cardiovascular health. RESEARCH: Dry-cured ham bones -- a source of heart-healthy peptides.

RESEARCH : Plants smell different when attacked by exotic herbivores.

RESEARCH : Plants smell different when attacked by exotic herbivores.Plants emit odors in response to herbivory. A new study reveals that the odor bouquet changes depending on the type of enemy that attacks the plant. To the surprise of the researchers involved, native plants emit a special odor bouquet when they are attacked by exotic herbivores.

RESEARCH :HOW PLANTS SMELL.

RESEARCH :HOW PLANTS SMELL.Plants don't need noses to smell. The ability is in their genes. Researchers have discovered the first steps of how information from odor molecules changes gene expression in plants. Manipulating plants' odor detection systems may lead to new ways of influencing plant behavior. Plants detect a class of odor molecules known as volatile organic compounds, which are essential for many plant survival strategies, including attracting birds and bees, deterring pests, and reacting to disease in nearby plants. These compounds also give essential oils their distinctive scents.

AGRIBUSINESS MANAGEMENT: THE BUSINESS OF AGRICULTURE.

AGRIBUSINESS MANAGEMENT: THE BUSINESS OF AGRICULTURE.

 The business angle of agriculture is agribusiness and the skills and tools necessary to ensure success in agriculture is the management of your business components. The success of any business depends on finding a gap and filling it completely.

 This means  you find an opening,a gap, a need that will improve lives of people. The business is also to promote economic growth apart from  satisfying a need /want in your environment .


 Business= finding a need/want/gap = fill it by providing the #product /#service/goods= #reward=#wealth.

This is also true in agriculture,find a gap/supply what is needed and make money.

 The story of ECHBEE FOODS,is not different we found a gap in the cassava/garri value chain and we filled it.

  Echbee Foods  discovered  that children under 5 were prone to malnutrition and vitamin A deficiency due to poor feeding associated with poverty and lack of knowledge of what to  mix to provide a balanced ration.

AGRIBUSINESS: PPR virus poses threat to conservation.

Cassava,cassava and more cassava.

https://veterinarymedicineechbeebolanle-ojuri.blogspot.com/

AGRIBUSINESS: How to Raise Honeybees.

AGRIBUSINESS: How to Raise Honeybees. Honeybees live in complex communities that may contain as many as 100,000 members. The vast majority of these are the unfertile female bees known as workers. And do they work. They run the hive; feed and clean the queen; gather nectar, pollen, and water (nectar gets converted into carbohydrate-rich honey; pollen is used as is for protein-rich "bee bread"); cool or heat the hive, as needed; feed developing larvae; and make the beeswax they use to build all the hive's cells. During the peak of the season, a worker will live only six weeks before she dies from exhaustion. She'll have gathered enough nectar to make 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey.

AGRIBUSINESS: Cocoa and chocolate are not just treats -- they are good for your cognition.

AGRIBUSINESS: Cocoa and chocolate are not just treats -- they are good for your cognition.Cocoa can be seen as a dietary supplement to protect human cognition and can counteract different types of cognitive decline. Researchers have examined the available literature for the effects of acute and chronic administration of cocoa flavanols on different cognitive domains. It turns out that cognitive performance was improved by a daily intake of cocoa flavanols. A balanced diet is chocolate in both hands -- a phrase commonly used to justify ones chocolate snacking behavior. A phrase now shown to actually harbor some truth, as the cocoa bean is a rich source of flavanols: a class of natural compounds that has neuroprotective effects. In their recent review published in Frontiers in Nutrition, Italian researchers examined the available literature for the effects of acute and chronic administration of cocoa flavanols on different cognitive domains. In other words: what happens to your brain up to a few hours after you eat cocoa flavanols, and what happens when you sustain such a cocoa flavanol enriched diet for a prolonged period of time? AGRIBUSINESS: Cocoa and chocolate are not just treats -- they are good for your cognition.