(a) Mention the pattern of crop-rotation for supply of green fodder throughout the year. (10 marks) (b) Constraints encountered…

(a) Crop Rotation for Year-Round Green Fodder Fodder is supplied all year by arranging a rotation of cereals and legumes across seasons, with perennials filling the gaps:

• Kharif (July–October): maize, sorghum or bajra, mixed with cowpea or cluster bean, cut at 50% flowering.
• Rabi (November–April): berseem, mixed with mustard or sarson in the early cuts, giving four to five cuts; and lucerne, oats and Italian ryegrass in the north.
• Zaid (March–June): fodder maize, sorghum (multi-cut varieties such as sudan grass) or cowpea with irrigation.
• Perennials on field boundaries and irrigated plots: hybrid napier (CO-3, CO-5) with hedge lucerne, or guinea grass, which cover the lean periods of November–December and May–June.

A typical sequence is maize + cowpea (kharif) then berseem (rabi) then sorghum or cowpea (zaid), or bajra + cowpea then oats. Legumes restore soil nitrogen, and duration of each crop is planned so each field is sown as the previous one is cut.

(b) Constraints in Transfer of Technology to Rural Women Women do a large share of dairy and livestock work, yet face these constraints:

• Social: purdah, patriarchy and restricted mobility keep them from training centres, demonstrations and KVK visits.
• Educational: low literacy and limited technical exposure make written extension material, dose calculation and equipment such as chaff cutters or milking machines hard to use.
• Economic: little land or asset ownership in their names limits credit (including Kisan Credit Card) and subsidies.
• Institutional: extension staff are mostly male; few female extension workers or veterinarians. Training timings ignore the double burden of household and farm work, and the content is not designed for them.

Remedies: women-only and village-level demonstrations at suitable times, audio-visual and local-language material, women extension workers, SHG-based training and credit (for example under DAY-NRLM and MKSP), and joint titles for assets.

(c) Care and Management of Pregnant Cows Care aims at maternal health, normal foetal growth and a good next lactation. Gestation is about 280 days.

Feeding: maintenance ration suffices up to about the seventh month. In the last two months, give a balanced concentrate of about 1–1.5 kg extra per day ("steaming up") for foetal growth and udder development, with mineral mixture and balanced Ca:P. A 60-day dry period allows udder recovery. Excess calcium before calving raises the risk of milk fever.

Housing: clean, dry, shaded, non-slippery floor, moderate exercise, and a separate, clean, bedded calving pen about two weeks before calving.

Health: regular deworming with pregnancy-safe drugs, vaccination (FMD, HS, brucellosis in heifers) and avoidance of stress, rough handling and abortion-risk exposure.

Calving: watch for pelvic ligament relaxation, udder filling and vulval swelling; call a veterinarian if labour is prolonged.

(d) General vs Specific Combining Ability Definition: GCA is the average performance of a parent line in crosses with many other lines. SCA is the deviation of a particular cross from what the GCA of its parents predicts.

Gene action: GCA reflects additive gene effects (and additive × additive epistasis). SCA reflects non-additive effects: dominance and the other epistatic interactions.

Fixability: GCA effects are heritable and can be fixed by selection. SCA effects are not transmitted reliably and are used once, in the specific cross.

Estimation: from diallel or line × tester designs, GCA variance estimates additive and SCA variance non-additive variance.

Use: high-GCA parents suit selection, pure lines and synthetic breeds. High-SCA pairs suit commercial crosses that exploit heterosis; for example, a particular sire breed × dam breed combination.

(e) Law of Independent Assortment Statement: when two or more pairs of alleles are followed, each pair segregates into gametes independently of the others, so all combinations appear, provided the genes lie on different chromosomes or far apart on one.

Mechanism: homologous pairs orient randomly at metaphase I, so the allele of one gene going to a gamete does not decide that of another.

Example, dihybrid cross in pea: round yellow (RRYY) × wrinkled green (rryy) gives uniform round yellow F₁ (RrYy). F₁ gives four equal gamete types: RY, Ry, rY and ry. Selfing gives a 9 : 3 : 3 : 1 phenotypic ratio in F₂ (9 round yellow, 3 round green, 3 wrinkled yellow, 1 wrinkled green), and a 1:2:1:2:4:2:1:2:1 genotypic ratio.

The round green and wrinkled yellow classes are new recombinants. Linked genes are the exception.