ABSTRACT
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) enrollment has grown significantly in recent years. After the US, India is leading the world in enrollment growth in MOOCs Programme. India has initiated a number of programmes to provide MOOC courses in response to the rising enrollment from the nation and to meet their educational needs. As an alternative to physically attending classes at a traditional educational institution, online learning technology, which is now a fundamental requirement of modern civilization, is also developing into an affordable, practical information provider as well as a provider of professional courses and educational degrees and this option has just been available through MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), particularly in India. India now uses NPTEL, mooKIT, IITBX, and SWAYAM as its course delivery platforms. This paper discusses the aspects of these platforms and provides a theoretical background and technological underpinning for them. The implementation of MOOCs in India and the main obstacles need to be addressed to make the programme a great success
ABSTRACT
Development of mutants and their effective utilization to incorporate desirable traits in tomato would be a sound improvement strategy to develop so called ‘smart’ tomato variety of the coming century. Initially we developed three induced mutants from two varieties, ‘Patharkuchi’, a local adapted cultivar and an introduced variety ‘Berika’, and then three crosses (Berika 9 P Mut-5, Berika 9 P Mut-11, Patharkuchi 9 B Mut-1) were made to involve in these two varieties and their respective mutants. Six generations (P1, P2, F1, F2, BC1 and BC2) of three crosses were utilized to study the genetic control of yield and quality traits, and to study the genetic basis of formation of dark green fruit. The nature and magnitude of gene action controlling the inheritance of 27 quantitative traits differed from one cross to another and from one trait to another, mostly conditioned by nonadditive gene action and duplicate epistasis. The prevalence of duplicate epistasis in three crosses for most of the traits revealed that the pace of progress through conventional selection process would be hindered as this kind of epistasis might result in decreased variation in F2 and subsequent generations. Recurrent selection in biparental progenies would be helpful for exploiting this type of nonallelic interaction through generation of high frequency of desirable recombination and concentration of genes having cumulative effects in the population. We also observed complex genetic behaviour of some of the traits revealing significant epistatic components. Inheritance study of ‘dark green fruit’ (dg1) of Berika 9 P Mut-5 cross revealed a single recessive gene governing the trait and expressed when the mutant gene was in homozygous recessive condition (designated as dg-1/dg-1).