INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE AND RESEARCH
Year:2011 | Volume:2 | Issue:4 (5)|Papers Count:8

Iran is among the world’s arid and semi-arid regions and its demand for water has been increased due to population growth, urbanization and the development the economic sectors (industrial and agricultural). In many of these regions, the lack of planning and the unauthorized use of resources have led to excessive exploitation and a lower level of groundwater. The usable groundwater for the country water supply is about 55 percent. Research has been carried out for modeling the Shazand groundwater, which is located in Markazi Province. Modeling has been carrying out using Visual Modflow software. In recent years Shazand aquifer groundwater levels have dropped significantly. Groundwater level during 8 years (1998-2006) was 0.84 m and the annual average 0.105 m has also fallen. Population, urbanization and increasing migration in this region have resulted in higher demand for water which its only solution is inevitably limited consumption in the agriculture sector through efficiency improvement. The model execution results for these two options reveal that efficiency improvement will increase the basin hydrograph about 3.4m during an 8 year period with 0.42 m annual average. Increasing population trends during a 10 year period have resulted in 2.5m reduction in the water table level with annual average of 0.23 m. According to planning horizon and drinking water supply, final results indicate that the stability of aquifer resources without other complementary resources depends on more limited agricultural usage through the improvement of efficiency and irrigation methods.

The purpose of this study is to identify factors affecting the development of entrepreneurship in the agricultural advisory services companies. The main instrument to collect the data was questionnaire and its validity of questionnaire is confirmed by experts and its reliability is measured through Cronbach’s alpha (75%). The data were analyzed by SPSS software version 16. The finding showed that situation of entrepreneurship development in agricultural advisory services companies was undesirable. The results indicated the most important factors on development of entrepreneurship in the agricultural advisory companies was infrastructural, marketing and policy factors respectively.

The general purpose of this article is to identify the influencing factors on rural women participation in agricultural extension programs in Mazandaran Province. Therefore, using multi-stage sampling, 300 rural women were selected randomly. The research instrument was a semi-structured questionnaire. Results show that rural women participation in agricultural extension programs is at average level. Rural women have more interaction with agricultural extension workers and female facilitators. Moreover, significant associations were found between some of the individual and professional characteristics of rural women and their participation in agricultural extension programs. Moreover, results from multiple regression shows that about 32 percent of changes in rural women participation in extension programs are identified by their experience in rice farming and their education level.

The main goal of this research is to assess socio- psychotic factors affecting the application ICTsby faculty members in Islamic Azad University. Simple random sampling method was used. Given that the present survey has a descriptive-field plan and questionnaire is measurement tool that reliability and validity of this tool was confirmed. The results of study show that nine variables affect the application of ICT. These variables explain 84 percent of the dependent variable’s variance. Computer competency, computer self-efficacy, management support and perceived ease of computer use were recognized as strong predictors of ICTs application.

In this article, we estimate the vertical price transmission through the Iranianrice marketing chain by using monthly data from March 2000 to February, 2009 and error correction model (ECM). The causality test results indicate that changes in the producer price clearly led changes in wholesale and retail prices. In Producer-Retail and Wholesale-Retail models, price transmission is asymmetric but in Producer-Wholesale model the estimated model supports symmetric price transmission for rice in Islamic Republic of Iran.

The changing context for agricultural development has highlighted a strong need to understand and adopt innovation systems thinking. Science, technology and innovation policy has equated rural development to agricultural development. The main objective of this paper was to examine the role of innovation capacity in agricultural sector. With the growing diversification of rural livelihood options into non-farm activities and with the increasing interconnectedness of rural areas and activities to the global environment, a new rural economy is emerging. This is bringing with greater pressures on farmers, companies and governments to innovate in response to different situations. So ideas of what constitutes “research capacity” have evolved, along with approaches for investing in the capacity to innovate, there for this study was done. This paper is to review and to describe, innovation system and agricultural innovation.

The major purpose of this study is to assess the perception of managers in the Forest, Range and Watershed Organization. It is an applied study by using descriptive–correlative method. A questionnaire was developed and data collected from 105 respondents. The validity and reliability of questionnaires was verified. The results of study show that there was a relationship between educational level, work experience, experiences in extension and education activities, role of extension in increasing information about sustainable forestry, create positive attitude, providing information about sustainable forestry indicators, motivation for participating in the projects, local management, allocation of appropriate financial resources, attend of extension education courses, participate in group discussions, visiting successful projects, using workshops, newsletters, magazines & bulletin and improvement of sustainable forestry management. Multivariate regression analysis shows that providing economic motivations of managers, being aware of indicators, using courses, management experiences & the role of extension in creating positive attitudes had positive impact on improvement of sustainable forestry sustainable management.

Farinograph is the most frequently used equipment for empirical rheological measurements of dough. It’s useful to illustrate quality of flour, behavior of dough during mechanical handling and textural characteristics of finished products. The percentage of water absorption and the development time of dough are the most important parameters of farinography for bakery industries during production. However, farinograph quality number is also a profitable factor for rapid evaluation of flour. Our purpose in present research is to apply artificial neural networks (ANNs) for predicting three important parameters of farinograph from simple measurable physicochemical properties of flour. Genetic algorithm (GA) was also applied in the training phase for optimizing different parameters of ANN’s structure and inputs. Sensitivity analyses were also conducted to explore the ability of inputs in predicting the networks outputs. Two neural networks were developed; the first for modeling water absorption and dough development time and the second for modeling farinograph quality number. Both developed ANNs using GA have excellent potential in predicting the farinograph properties of dough. In developed models, gluten index and Zeleny, suitable parameters for qualitative measurements of samples, played the most important role for predicting dough farinograph characterisations.