Agroforestry Adoption Decision in Green Growth Initiative Programs: Key Lessons from the Billion Trees Afforestation Project (BTAP).

Adoption of agroforestry in the early spring under the green growth initiative programs, such as the Billion Trees Afforestation Project, has positively impacted crop productivity and plantation success in Pakistan. However, the timely adoption decision of agroforestry in the Hindu Kush Himalayan is still low, particularly among smallholders. Using a mixed-method approach, we examine the factors influencing smallholder households and community-level timely agroforestry adoption decisions. Findings show that the early and later decision-makers farmers had agricultural lands on riversides and primarily adopted agroforestry to protect their crops from devastating effects of winds and floods. In contrast, late adoption decision-makers adopted agroforestry for income diversification. Results of our logit model show that several household and community-level factors influence smallholders' timely adoption of agroforestry. The factors that positively affect the timely adoption of agroforestry include age-related factors, education, and the establishment/existence of functional community-based organizations. In contrast, political conflicts and tenure insecurity negatively affect smallholders' timely adoption of agroforestry. In-depth interviews with Village Development Committees members revealed that terrace farming, farms on riversides, communities without access to other energy sources, population growth, and low farm acreage ensured the timely adoption of agroforestry. The policy recommendations include strengthening collaborative efforts among community members, especially engaging educated old-aged farmers (elders of traditional communities) to increase adoption rates and land tenure security to ensure timely agroforestry adoption under the newly launched 10-BTAP.

Public Health Surveillance of Pediatric Polio in Pakistan: A Cohort Study.

Background and objective Polio continues to be endemic in Pakistan despite substantial international efforts to combat it, which presents a serious public health concern. Strategies for eradicating polio depend on understanding the dynamics of pediatric polio transmission and the efficacy of surveillance. This research study aimed to critically evaluate the public health surveillance system for pediatric polio in Pakistan and propose recommendations for improvement. Methodology This study was conducted from June 2020 to July 2023 in three well-known hospitals in different areas of Pakistan and involved 26 patients. Reviews of medical records, interviews, and surveillance report analysis were all part of the data collection process. Descriptive statistics, chi-square tests, and logistic regression analysis were performed using SPSS Statistics version 27.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY) with the statistical significance set at p<0.05. Results The highest incidence of polio was observed in children aged 13-24 months (nine patients, 34.62%), with males accounting for 14 cases (53.85%) and urban residents 16 cases (61.54%). Vaccination status significantly influences disease incidence (p<0.001), with two patients (7.69%) unvaccinated, 10 patients (38.46%) partially vaccinated, and 14 patients (53.85%) fully vaccinated. Paralysis was the predominant symptom in 16 patients (61.54%). Recovery outcomes varied, with eight patients (31%) fully recovering, 12 patients (46%) showing partial improvement, and six patients (23%) experiencing chronic motor impairments. Effective surveillance depends on timely reporting [odds ratio (OR): 2.15, p<0.001] and healthcare worker training (OR: 1.67, p<0.001), highlighting crucial aspects of polio management strategies. Conclusions Based on our findings, vaccination status significantly impacts polio occurrence, with a notable proportion found in partially vaccinated or unvaccinated children. Paralysis remains the primary symptom, with varied recovery outcomes, including chronic motor impairments in some cases. This study underscores Pakistan's ongoing challenges with pediatric polio, highlighting the crucial need for improved vaccination, surveillance, and rehabilitation efforts.

Adoption of hand tractor technology in terrace farming: Evidence from the Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH), Pakistan.

Adoption of improved agricultural technologies can help achieve the two Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of no poverty and zero hunger by 2030. This study investigates the determinants of farmers' adoption of hand tractors in the HKH region of Pakistan using binary logit model. We also examine what facilitates and what impedes the adoption of hand tractor adoption using key informant interviews. Results show that household head education, farming experience, knowledge of hand tractor use, access to credit, extension contact, and trust in technology positively affect the adoption of hand tractor; however farm size is negatively related. The findings reveal that ethnic conflicts, political conflicts, elite capture in decision making, unavailability of functional community-based entities, weak extension-farmers contact, as well as weak inter- and intra-community linkages are key barriers affecting hand tractor adoption. Similarly, observed changes on neighbors' fields, experiencing hand tractor on trial basis, communication networks, risk observations, and trust propensities motivate hand tractor adoption in the study region. Thus, to effectively disseminate improved agricultural technologies, policymakers should consider these factors.

Reconnoitering NGOs strategies to strengthen disaster risk communication (DRC) in Pakistan: A conventional content analysis approach.

Risk communication is crucial since individuals need to understand how they are at risk and what proper steps to deal with flood events. Sharing information with the public opens the door for two-way communication about risks, wherein you learn about people's perspectives and work together to find ways to mitigate the risks. Beyond government scope, relief organizations play a big part in advising individuals about the likelihood of catastrophic events as they possess the commonalities that define community engagement. In numerous accounts of devastating events, the failure of risk management groups to coordinate their efforts and the public's mistrust of relief agencies are highlighted. One possible explanation for this skepticism could be relief organizations' failures in communicating risks. In addition, individuals' lack of skills and experience with catastrophes has left rural residents unprepared, which is why relief agencies need to raise their efforts or measures to communicate with people about possible risks. If these measures are uncovered, it could improve public communication and provide information for formulating recommendations to prevent fatalities. This study identifies the strategies used by relief organizations in enhancing disaster risk communication across four severely affected districts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The qualitative research used semi-structured interviews with 50 participants from relief organizations, local institutions, and affected households. We employed qualitative content analysis and NVivo software to analyze the data. The findings of this study highlighted some significant strategies that relief organizations adopted in this line of work: the administration of educational and information transmission, managing obstacles in communication, and managing inter-organizational communications. The findings validate the potential for relief organizations to become change agents, facilitate communication between the public and relief organizations, and ultimately strengthen community resilience and reduce disaster risks as part of local responses.

The effect of COVID-19 pandemic on market integration: Evidence from vegetable farmers in Pakistan.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the agriculture sector and farming communities to unprecedented risks. This study investigates the impact of the pandemic, identifying the suggestions of community elders for effective resilience via in-depth interviews (IDIs) and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs). We also examine determinants of vegetable farmers' inputs and outputs market participation using a binary logit model. The findings reveal poor business owners' support, difficulties accessing inputs and outputs markets, non-availability/shortage of inputs recommended by extension services, and poor access to mechanizations. Labor shortages, lack of access to agricultural credit, and lack of information on innovations and markets are also barriers to market integration of farming communities in Pakistan. Results of the logit model show that farming experience and support from market owners drive the participation of both the inputs and outputs market. Similarly, ownership of personal vehicles and the availability of farm machinery drive the participation of farmers in outputs markets. Various strategies are suggested to mitigate the risks of the Covid-19 pandemic, including the establishment of inputs and outputs markets, strategies for transportation, access to information, and farm machinery at the local level.

Constraints to agroforestry diffusion under the Billion Trees Afforestation Project (BTAP), Pakistan: policy recommendations for 10-BTAP.

Effective agroforestry diffusion under the newly started 10-Billion Trees Afforestation Project (10-BTAP) needs a thorough understanding of the policy and implementation shortfalls of the already completed BTAP. This study examines the factors that affected the diffusion of the agroforestry in the Hindu-Kush Himalayan (HKH) region of Pakistan under BTAP. The data were gathered through in-depth interviews with Village Development Committee (VDC) members, Forest Department (FD) officials, and local farmers. Important factors positively affecting agroforestry diffusion included locations of crop fields on the river sides, community dependency on firewood, and market value of agroforestry timber. The logistic regression model shows that household head's age, access to information, and area under cropland positively affected household level adoption of agroforestry under BTAP; forest cover was negatively related. In-depth interviews show that key barriers to FD in diffusion of agroforestry included provision of false information by farmers to monitoring teams, non-availability of extension staff, lack of communication among project staff and community, as well as a lack of sufficient budget for activities. Primary barriers to community adoption of agroforestry included no participation of VDCs in planning and monitoring of agroforestry programs, lack of plant need assessments on the part of the project staff, poor quality of plants distributed by FD, farmers' poor know-how of plantations, lack of trust among community and project staff, as well as the waste of plants by farming community. Thus, this study recommends that policy-makers and project designers should consider these factors when planning agroforestry diffusion under 10-BTAP to improve its success.

RNAi-Mediated Silencing of Putative Halloween Gene Phantom Affects the Performance of Rice Striped Stem Borer, Chilo suppressalis.

The physiological and biochemical characterization of the "Halloween" genes has fundamental importance in the biosynthesis pathway of ecdysteroids. These genes were found to catalyze the final phases of ecdysteroid biosynthesis from dietary cholesterol to the molting hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone. We report the characterization of the Cs-Phm in a major insect pest in agriculture, the rice striped stem borer, Chilo suppressalis (C. suppressalis). A full-length transcript of Cs-Phm was amplified with an open reading frame (ORF) of 478 amino acids through 5' and 3' RACE. Cs-Phm shows five insect-conserved P450 motifs: Helix-C, Helix-I, Helix-K, PERF, and heme-binding motifs. Phylogenetic analysis clearly shows high similarity to Lepidoptera and evolutionary conservation in insects. The relative spatial and temporal transcript profile shows that Cs-Phm is highly expressed in the prothoracic glands and appears throughout the larval development, but with low expression at the start of the larval instar. It seems to peak in 3-4 days and decreases again before the larvae molt. Double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) injection of Cs-Phm at the larval stage efficiently knocked down the target gene and decreased its expression level. The dsRNA-treated group showed significantly decreased ecdysteroid titers, which leads to delayed larval development and higher larval mortality. Negative effects of larval development were rescued by treating 20E in the dsRNA-treated group. Thus, in conclusion, our results suggest that Cs-Phm is functionally conserved in C. suppressalis and encodes functional CYP that contributes to the biogenesis of 20E.

Nutritional effects of supplementary diets on brood development, biological activities and honey production of Apis mellifera L.

The present research work was conducted to assess the impact of nutrient-enriched diet on the physiological activities and subsequently honey yield. Eighteen colonies of Apis mellifera L. were selected from Dera Ismail Khan region, KPK, Pakistan, during the winter and summer seasons, 2019-2020. Five pollen supplement diets were prepared and provided to screen out the palatable one to be fed as pollen alternative nutrition to bee bread. Results of diet consumption regarding mean data for consumption rate displayed that soybean flour enriched artificial diet was maximally consumed (74.34 g) by honey bees per week. Minimum consumption was observed for grinded groundnut enriched diet (64.62 g) which was relatively lesser than the other tested artificial diets. Results of area of worker brood disclosed that soybean flour fortified diet (1489.27 cm2/colony) statistically noteworthy than the other artificial diets whereas control (463.51 cm2/colony) was least effective. Highest bee strength (10.00 bee frames/colony) was noted in the bee colonies fed with soybean flour fortified diet, date paste (8.0 bee frames/colony) was the next effective one, among the tested pollen replacement diets whereas relatively least (5 bee frames/colony) was noticed in case of grinded groundnut. Highest body weight (12.41 g) of neonate bees was noted in case of soybean enriched diet while lowermost (5.31 g) was noted in control bees. Results of wax cell built up and foraging efficiency were also superior in artificial diets than respective control bees. Hence, artificial diets especially soybean-enriched pollen alternative diet can boost up the physiology of honey bee leading to increased honey yield and profit.

Role of local communities in forest landscape restoration: Key lessons from the Billion Trees Afforestation Project, Pakistan.

The Billion Trees Afforestation Project (BTAP) was launched in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province of Pakistan to conserve existing forests and to increase the area under forest cover. It also aimed to restore environmental conditions, promote rural livelihoods and reduce poverty. To improve the effectiveness of afforestation projects, it is essential to know the role of various factors and their impacts on community participation in landscape restoration. However, these factors and their impacts remain unexplored for the BTAP. This study identifies the factors that influenced rural household participation in the BTAP in Pakistan. The data were collected from participants and nonparticipants in the BTAP as well as from various officials. We employed both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze the data. The results of the focus group discussions and the professional evaluation of the BTAP revealed that participant farmers enjoyed all the benefits of the project at the individual and community levels. However, the project provided only partial benefits to nonparticipant farmers at both levels. The household-level results showed that age, income from forest resources, a friendly relationship with forest department staff, a risk-bearing attitude and membership or involvement in village development committee activities had positive and significant effects on farmer participation, while disputes over land and forest resources, household size and experience with/dependence on livestock farming had negative and significant impacts on farmer participation in the BTAP. Our results suggest that policymakers and project designers should pay more attention to the factors that hindered farmer participation in the BTAP. The participation of landless and disadvantaged groups in the 10-BTAP should be increased to ensure equal and widespread benefits for all users and to ensure a win-win situation of sustainable management of the forest, the environment and livelihood opportunities for all types of forest users.

Economic efficiency of rainfed wheat farmers under changing climate: evidence from Pakistan.

Rainfed wheat farming directly depends upon climatic indicators and is mostly at the mercy of climatic extremes. This study analyzed the relationship between the economic efficiency of rainfed wheat farmers and indicators of climate variability in Pakistan employing a two-stage methodological framework. We used farm household level crop input-output and management data and secondary data on climate. In the first stage, a stochastic production frontier (SPF) approach was used to calculate economic efficiency. Then, in the second stage, the calculated economic efficiency scores were regressed against the temperature threshold, temperature anomaly, and total rainfall, in addition to socioeconomic, institutional, and farm variables, using OLS and quantile regression models. The results showed that temperature anomaly and the number of days when temperatures exceed 30 °C have negative and significant impacts on the economic efficiency of rainfed wheat farmers. Total rainfall showed positive and significant impacts across both OLS and quantile regression models. Further, we modeled a novel and very important variable in the context of rainfed wheat production in Pakistan, that is, farmers' participation in trainings in climate-resilient crop farming. This variable showed a positive and highly significant impact on economic efficiency of wheat farmers across all regression models. Our findings call for important policy implications, including developing up-to-date climate resilient adaptation strategies that are particularly focused on rainfed wheat farming. Establishing strong linkages between extension departments and rainfed wheat farmers could help sustain and improve the efficiency of rainfed wheat farmers and hence food and livelihood security.

Correction to: Economic efficiency of rainfed wheat farmers under changing climate: evidence from Pakistan.

The correct Eq. 4 is presented in this paper.

Wheat yield response to input and socioeconomic factors under changing climate: Evidence from rainfed environments of Pakistan.

More than three-quarters of the world's total cultivated land is under rainfed farming, producing almost 70% of total food. Most food production comes from developing and least favored nations. Pakistan, a developing country with an agro-based economy, is facing severe threats from climate change. Rainfed agriculture, especially wheat farming, is highly susceptible due to its heavy dependency on precipitation, one of the most important climatic parameters. Wheat is the main food crop, as well as a major source of calorific intake, for millions of people in Pakistan. This study aims to quantify the impacts of climate variability on mean yield levels and yield variability of wheat crop in the rainfed zone of Pakistan. Multistage random sampling technique is used for primary data collection from 400 rainfed wheat farmers during the 2016-17 crop season. The study uses primary data on crop input-output, management, socioeconomic, institutional, and historical climatic data (1980-2017). The data are analyzed employing the Just and Pope (J-P) stochastic production function approach with linear and non-linear functional forms. The results reveal that temperature rise negatively affects observed wheat mean yields, while cumulative precipitation positively affected it. Further, input market access, seed rate, and cumulative precipitation also cause variability in yield levels, leading to yield instability. Further, farm elevation influences wheat mean yield positively while input market access influences it negatively. The findings of the study have important implications for climate resilient wheat farming. Timely and tailor-made adaptations need to be undertaken in the rainfed wheat farming systems of Pakistan. Creating awareness among farmers about the optimal use of agronomic inputs under changing climatic conditions could be an effective adaptation strategy that improves yields and copes with yield instability.