BACKGROUND Poultry represents an important sector in animal production, with backyard flocks representing a huge majority, especially in the developing countries. In these countries, villagers raise poultry to meet household food demands and as additional sources of incomes. Backyard production methods imply low biosecurity measures and high risk of infectious diseases, such as Newcastle diseas...

The spatial pattern and epidemiology of backyard pig farming and other low bio-security pig production systems and their role in the occurrence of classical swine fever (CSF) is described and evaluated. A spatial Bayesian model was used to explore the risk factors, including human demographics, socioeconomic and environmental factors. The analyses were performed for Bulgaria, which has a large ...

A year ago, biofuel was a buzzword, a reasonable technical solution to many of our environmental problems. Politicians across the European Union and in North America were busy setting targets, deciding what percentage of transport fuels should be replaced by biofuels by what time. The corn-ethanol industry in the US went into overdrive, and many governments in the developing world set up fuel c...

In recent years the economic damage inflicted by several avian influenza (AI) subtypes (primarily H5N1 and H9N2, but also H7N1, H7N3, H7N7) on the commercial poultry industry and backyard poultry is beyond simple calculation. In response to the continued losses suffered by commercial poultry producers large scale vaccination has been introduced in many affected countries for the commercial sect...

Backyard gardens, dump heaps, and kitchen middens are thought to have provided important venues for early crop domestication via generation of hybrids between otherwise isolated plant species. However, this process has rarely been demonstrated empirically. For the majority of polyploid crops, it remains uncertain to what extent hybridization and polyploidization preceded domestication or were p...

Present study was conducted to evaluate the quality traits of poultry eggs collected from various sources i.e. market, commercial farm and backyard farming, in Karachi. A total of 250 eggs were analyzed for external and internal qualities. A significant difference (p <0.05) was recorded in quality parameters except percent shell, shell thickness, egg width, egg weight, shape index and Haugh uni...

This paper investigates the state-sponsored low cost housing provided to previously disadvantaged communities in the City of Cape Town. The strain imposed on municipal services by informal densification of unofficial backyard shacks was found to create unintended public health risks. Four subsidized low-cost housing communities were selected within the City of Cape Town in this cross-sectional ...