Coverage of Women Issues in the Pakistan’s Press: A Critical Analysis

The aim of this research is to thoroughly analyze the part multilingual dailies play in covering women issues in Pakistan. It is rooted from national newspapers, the Daily ‘Dawn’, the Daily ‘Jang’ and the Daily ‘Kawish’ in the year of 2011. The study explores to what extent of the violence against women and education issue of women is dealt by the sampled dailies. The study employed content analysis a quantitative research methodology during 1st January 2011 to 31st December 2011. The contents of the newspaper were measured in column per centimeter of the space of one year. For this research work three major dailies of three different languages, the Daily Dawn, the Daily Jang and the Daily Kawish were selected. In sum up, an elite class newspaper the Daily Dawn has published 562 very little issues of women and used 0.6 percent of the total capacity which is of 4353024 co./cm in the year of 2011. However, the Sindhi language newspaper, the Daily Kawish has used 2430 a little more issue of women and covered 2.3 percent of total capacity of 1678976 col./cm of this daily in 2011. To some extent, the Urdu language newspaper the Daily Jang has reported 1297 more number of women issues and used 1 percent of total capacity of 2423616 col./cm in one year. Hence, the result shows that Pakistani press gives a little bit space to issues of women rights. Although, the Daily Dawn and the Daily Kawish have reported more issues of violence against women but the Daily Jang (an Urdu language newspaper) has covered more education problems of women in its newspaper in the year of 2011.

Effects of Nitrogen and Seed Priming on Forage Yield and Quality of Sorghum Sorghum Bicolor L. Cultivars

Most of the farmers grow sorghum by traditional soaking for some hours, they did not know about priming and appropriate soaking time. The present studies to determine the effect of nitrogen and seed priming on forage yield and quality of sorghum cultivars were conducted at the Agronomic Research Area, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad. One wire house and two field experiments were conducted for this study. Wire house experiment was conducted in pots and was laid out in completely randomized design with three replicates. Both the field experiments were laid out in randomized complete block design with factorial arrangement using three replicates. In the wire house experiment sorghum genotypes (Hegari, Sadabahar, PC-1, JS- 263, JS-2002, F-9917, F-2022) and priming techniques (Non-primed, CaCl 2 , hydropriming, KNO 3 and on-farm priming) were screened out for better emergence. The response of four best performed cultivars (F-9917, Hegari, JS-263 and JS-2002) to best priming techniques i.e. on- farm priming, Hydropriming, KNO 3 and CaCl 2 in wire house experiment was studied in 1st field experiment. In the second field experiment interactive effects of four nitrogen levels (0, 40, 80 and120 Kg ha-1) and priming techniques (Non-primed, CaCl 2 , hydropriming, KNO 3 and on-farm priming) on sorghum cultivar JS-2002 were studied. Results of experiments showed that seed priming reduced the time to start emergence, time taken to 50 % emergence, mean emergence time and increased the energy of emergence, final emergence percentage, emergence count, fresh weight and dry weight per plant in wire house and field experiments. Priming improved the nitrogen uptake, leaf area, leaf area index, leaf area duration, crop growth rate, net assimilation rate and crude protein, but negatively influenced the fat contents in both field experiments. Among all the priming techniques CaCl 2 proved better for most of the parameters mentioned above. Varieties differed significantly from one another for time to start emergence, time taken to 50% emergence, energy of emergence and final emergence percentage in the wire house experiment, but showed no effect under field conditions on time to start emergence, time taken to 50% emergence and mean emergence time. In the first field experiment cultivars differed for emergence count, coefficient of uniformity of emergence, plant height, stem diameter, number of leaves, leaf area, fresh weight per plant, dry weight per plant, stand density at final harvest, forage yield, dry matter yield and nitrogen uptake. Varieties also differed for physiological and quality attributes. The interaction was found non-significant for all parameters. Cultivar JS-2002 performed better than all other cultivars for growth, yield and quality attributes. In the second field experiment nitrogen levels did not show any impact on emergence parameters of sorghum, but significantly improved the forage yield and maximum yield was recorded at nitrogen level of 120 kg ha-1 did not differ significantly from 80 kg ha-1. The increase in yield was mainly due to greater plant height, stem diameter, number of leaves and leaf area plant-1. The physiological parameters like leaf area index (LAI), leaf area duration (LAD), crop growth rate (CGR) and net assimilation rate (NAR) were improved by nitrogen application. The quality parameters i.e. crude protein, crude fibre and total ash were also significantly improved by nitrogen application. The increase in nitrogen application decreased the ether extractable fat contents. The interactions were not significant for all parameters recorded in field experiments.