Horticultural Crops: Area Production and Productivity

Posted on April 30, 2015

The area under horticulture crops which was 12.77 million hectares during 1991-1992 has increased to 23.69 million hectares during 2012-13. The total production during this period has increased by nearly 2.8 times and corresponding productivity has increased 1.5 times.
As compared to 257.1 Million Tonnes of food grain production during 2012-13, the total horticulture production was 268.9 Million Tonnes. The annual growth rates for area and production of horticulture crops during 2012-13 over 2011-12 were 1.9% and 4.5% respectively. Percentage share of vegetables production in the total horticulture production was highest (60.3 % during 2012-13) as compared to other horticulture crops.
The total horticulture production was highest in case of West Bengal (292 lakh MT) followed by Andhra Pradesh (289.13 lakh MT).During 2012-13, the highest production of fruits of 139.39 lakh MT was recorded in Andhra Pradesh (17.1% share) followed by 97.85 lakh MT in Maharashtra (12%). Likewise, the highest production of vegetables (15.7%) was in West Bengal followed by 12.1% in Uttar Pradesh.

Radiocarbon Dating: how does it work??

Posted on April 28, 2015 Updated on April 28, 2015

Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method of determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon (14C), a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was invented by Willard Libby in the late 1940s, for which he got Nobel Prize for his work in 1960. Radiocarbon dating has now become a standard tool for archaeologists.

The radiocarbon dating method is based on the fact that radiocarbon is constantly being created in the atmosphere by the interaction of cosmic rays with atmospheric nitrogen. The resulting radiocarbon combines with atmospheric oxygen to form radioactive carbon dioxide, which is incorporated into plants by photosynthesis; animals then acquire 14C by eating the plants. Thus, during its life, a plant or animal is continuously exchanging carbon with its surroundings, and the carbon it contains will have the same proportion of 14C as the atmosphere. When the animal or plant dies, it stops exchanging carbon with its environment, and from that point onwards the amount of 14C it contains begins to reduce as the 14C undergoes radioactive decay thereby gradually decreasing the ratio of 14C to 12C in its remains . Since 14C decays at a known rate,  measuring the amount of 14C in a sample from a dead plant or animal such as piece of wood or a fragment of bone can be used to determine how long it has been since a given sample stopped exchanging carbon from the atmosphere. This information can be used to calculate the time period when the animal or plant died. The older a sample is, the less 14C there is to be detected, and because the half-life of 14C (the period of time after which half of a given sample will have decayed) is about 5,730 years, the oldest dates that can be reliably measured by radiocarbon dating are around 50,000 years ago.