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This paper aims to understand the significant farm and market-level factors that incentivize the adoption and marketing of pulses influencing its supply response to changing demand.

The authors first use a modified Nerlovian supply response model using secondary data to identify the major price and non-price factors influencing the supply of pigeon pea, black and green gram in the major pulses growing states in India. Second, using primary qualitative data the authors map the pulses value chain from farm to retail to identify the how proportional and fixed transaction costs (FCTs) influence market participation of pulses growers and limit the transmission of price and quality information.

The supply response model shows some positive influence of price on area allocation for pigeon pea and black gram and some negative effects of yield and price increase of competing crops on pigeon pea acreage. However, for the most part, the area of Kharif pulses is inelastic to prices in the long run. Irrigation, rainfall and yields in the lag year are shown to have a significant influence on area allocation for pulses. The market study reveals that low yields, low landholding size and geographical disadvantages of high agro-climatic risk and poor connectivity hinder market access of pulses farmers relative to other crops. Market power in favor of buyers and poor price and quality information is a disadvantage to sellers, influencing their ability to participate in markets.

A quantitative study would be required to identify the magnitude of farm and market-level transaction costs.

This study helps to understand the supply response of pulses and gives suggestions to direct policy to rectify this.

This paper aims to evaluate the effects of climate variables on the mean yield and yield variability of major pulse crops in the Telangana state of India.

Authors have estimated the Just and Pope (1978, 1979) production function using panel data at the district level of four major pulses in nine former districts of Telangana for 36 years during 1980–2015. A three-stage feasible generalized least squares estimation procedure has been followed. The mean yield and yield variance functions have been estimated individually for each of these study crops, namely, Bengal gram, green gram, red gram and horse gram.

Results have shown that changes in climatic factors such as rainfall and temperature have significant influences on the mean yield levels and yield variance of pulses. The maximum temperature is observed to have a significant adverse impact on the mean yield of a majority of pulses, and it is also a risk-enhancing factor for a majority of pulses except horse gram. However, the minimum temperature is positively related to the mean yields of the study crops except for Bengal gram, and it is having a risk-reducing impact for a majority of study crops. Rainfall is observed to have a negative impact on the mean yields of all pulses, but it is a risk-enhancing factor for only one crop, i.e. Bengal gram. Thus, rising temperatures and excess rainfall are not favorable to the productivity of pulses in study districts.

The present study is based on the secondary data at the district level and is considering only one state. Season-wise primary data, including farm-specific characteristics, could have been better. The projected climate change and its impact on the mean yields and yield variance of pulses need to be considered in a future study.

According to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to empirically evaluate the impact of climatic variables on the mean yields and yield variability of major pulses in Telangana using a panel data for major pulses and nine districts of 36 years time-series during 1980–2015. The study has given useful policy recommendations.

This study seeks to examine empirically import demand for total pulses, chickpeas and lentils in India based on the concept of unit root and cointegration.

The Stock‐Watson dynamic OLS (DOLS) model – which is robust to small sample and eliminates simultaneity bias – is used to derive the long‐run price, income and urbanisation elasticities of import demand. The data covers the period 1970‐2000.

Results indicate that real GDP, relative price and urbanisation are the key determinants of import demand for pulses in India. The estimated long‐run elasticities of import demand with respect to income (relative price) are 0.4 (−1.7) for chickpeas, 0.56 (−0.87) for lentils and 0.36 (0.00) for total pulses. The estimated long‐run elasticities of import demand with respect to urbanisation are 9.9 for chickpeas, zero for lentils and 7.2 for total pulses. The policy implications of the results are discussed.

Provides evidence that the response of import demand for pulses to key determinants differ substantially from product to product.

Sparkers can be used for the production of acoustic pulses as seismic source for sub‐bottom profiling in the sea. A multi‐tip (200‐800 tips) sparker has been developed, which makes high‐resolution seismic profiling possible in deep water. The characteristics of the multi‐tip sparker system have been measured in a basin in the laboratory using different arrangements of the capacitive energy storage and salinity of the water. A model in Matlab is used to calculate the current waveform in the spark array for different layouts of the power supply.

This work examines the impact of institutional agricultural credit on crop productivity of some major crops such as paddy, cotton, wheat and pulses for small and marginal farmers across various social groups.

The cross-sectional field data on socio economic variables was collected from three Indian states from about 400 small and marginal farmers across various social groups using multi-stage stratified random and purposive sampling through a structured questionnaire by interviewing. The method of propensity score matching (PSM) was employed to calculate average treatment effect (ATE) and average treatment effect on the treated (ATET) by categorising sample farmers as treatment group and control group where crop productivity was considered as outcome variable and access to institutional credit was considered as treatment variable.

The PSM estimates reveal that ATE and ATET for all the selected crops are found to be significantly higher for the treated group vis-à-vis non-treated group suggesting that institutional agricultural credit has a statistically and significant positive impact on the crop productivity.

Similar study can be extended for more crops and across regions in India for a universal coverage.

The agricultural credit policy of India has been to increase the access and availability of institutional farm credit. This has led to in general increase in the flow of formal farm credit to agricultural sector. However, the impact of institutional credit and crop productivity especially for small and marginal farmers across social groups is not well recognized in India using field data. Accordingly, this field data study contributes to the existing research by providing fresh evidence from field across social groups for both kharif and rabi crops using recent survey data from small and marginal farmers which has important policy implications.

The case illustrates the application of the concepts of demand elasticities of an agricultural product with high protein content - pulses. It considers the current situation where a good monsoon has raised hopes for a bumper crop of pulses in India. From a deficit of about 20% met by imports, the county now is looking at attaining self-sufficiency. Public Policy options such as exports, imports or allowing domestic price adjustments or changing the minimum support price (MSP) in this regard are also considered.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the level of food self‐sufficiency, un‐accessed portions of food, and food gap between the national food security line of the country and consumption by its people. It also aims to scrutinize the major physical and economic factors inducing food insecurity in the country.

The paper applies descriptive statistics using mainly secondary data with the support of some primary information.

Pakistan is almost self‐sufficient in food production even if only 30 percent of its production potential has been achieved. In spite of such a situation, the average food consumption of its people is still significantly below the standards set up for the national food security line. The study also established that the food gap in the country is 30 percent, while a 35 percent portion of available food is un‐accessed due to various constraints spawned by physical, economic and sometimes natural factors. Out of the seven administrative units of Pakistan, Punjab and Sindh are the main food producing units while the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are the most highly food deficit unit. Irrespective of the level of local food production, food gap still exists in all administrative units due to inefficient food procurement and distribution system, illegal movement of food commodities, poor monitoring of marketing systems, lower purchasing power and natural disasters.

The paper elaborates on the average situation of the country, and establishes the baseline for future research to investigate the issues of food security deeply, providing some key recommendations.

The paper investigates the concept of food security through the important indicators, i.e. food gap and un‐accessed portion of food, and tries to sort out the factors inducing such gaps.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the market integration and direction of causality of wholesale and retail prices for the chickpea legume in major chickpea markets in India.

In this paper, the authors employ the Johansen co-integration test, Granger causality test, vector autoregression (VAR), and vector error correction model (VECM) to examine the integration of markets. The authors use monthly wholesale and retail price data of the chickpea crop from select markets in India spanning January 2003–December 2020.

The results of this study strongly confirm the co-integration and interdependency of the selected chickpea markets in India. However, the speed of adjustment of prices in the wholesale market is weakest in Bikaner, followed by Daryapur and Narsinghpur; it is relatively moderate in Gulbarga. In contrast, the speed of adjustment is negative for Bhopal and Delhi, weak for Nasik, and moderate for retail market prices in Bangalore. The results of the causality test show that the Narsinghpur, Daryapur, and Gulbarga markets are the most influential, with bidirectional relations in the case of wholesale market prices. Meanwhile, the Bangalore market is the most connected and effective retail market among the selected retail markets. It has bidirectional price transmission with two other markets, i.e. Bhopal and Nasik.

This paper calls for forthcoming studies to investigate the impact of external and internal factors, such as market infrastructure; government policy regarding self-reliant production; product physical characteristics; and rate of utilization indicating market integration. They should also focus on strengthening information technology for the regular flow of market information to help farmers increase their incomes.

Very few studies have explored market efficiency and direction of causality using both linear and nonlinear techniques for wholesale and retail prices of chickpea in India.

Irrigation facility has been identified by many researchers as one of the essential institutional factors in agriculture sector of any country, including India. Furthermore, its importance has also been admitted in the agro-productions in any provinces, districts and blocks. The equitable distribution of such facilities may lead to equitable distributions in the productivity of land for different crop productions. Under this milieu, this chapter intends to examine the trends in the different types of paddy production and irrigational facilities in the Paschim Medinipur District of West Bengal State in India and tries to correlate whether disparities in paddy production are associated with disparities in the distribution of irrigational facilities. The results show positive association between the two and prescribe inclusive arrangements of irrigational facilities to all the blocks in the district to have long-term solutions.

The purpose of this study is to compare two unsteady actuators: an oscillator and a sweeping jet. Both actuators can produce an oscillating jet of different amplitudes and frequencies without any moving parts, making them an attractive actuator concept. The Coanda effect phenomenon can explain the operating principles of these two unsteady actuators.

A numerical study was conducted to compare the amplitudes and frequencies of fluidic and sweeping jet (SJ) oscillators to obtain an efficient actuator to control separated flows at high Reynolds numbers. For this goal, two-dimensional unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulations were carried out using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) fluent code to evaluate the actuator performances. The discrete fast Fourier transform method determined the oscillation frequencies.

The oscillation frequencies gradually increase as the inlet pressure increases. The characteristics and dimensions of the vortices produced in the mixing chamber and feedback loops vary overtime when the injected fluid is swept sideways. The frequencies supplied by the SJ are stronger than those obtained by the fluidic oscillator, which may contribute to improving the aerodynamic performance at a lower power supply cost.

The existence of the splitter in the fluidic oscillator led to the production of separate pulses, which would be useful in various industrial applications, including active control of combustion and mixing processes while other applications such as flow separation control require SJs. With the latter actuator higher and interesting frequencies can be obtained, leading to efficient flow control.