Impact of Women Empowerment on Fertility Preferences in Pakistan

Reproduction is an important aspect of a women's life, unfortunately in Pakistan fertility rates are quite high in comparison to other developing countries as well as in comparison to the other South Asian countries. Different studies have suggested that women empowerment can help reduce fertility rates. The present study has attempted to analyze the role of women empowerment along with other socioeconomic indicators on three different dimensions of the fertility behavior i.e. Number of children born (current fertility status), ideal number of children and birth intervals (future fertility status. Data of Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) 2012-13 has been used. The analysis consists of two levels, at level one a descriptive analysis is carried out. As three different aspects of fertility are the count data. Therefore at the next stage models will be estimated by using poison regression technique and Incidence Rate Ratios (IRR) are reported. It has been found that women’s being empowered in financial matters, seeking health care and in household decision making are helpful in reducing fertility. Furthermore, participation in job by women, living in urban areas, having secondary or higher education, access to awareness created by the media, married at higher age are also significant factors in reducing fertility. However, women facing incidence of miscarriage or death of a child tends to increase the fertility. Study had found that wealth of the household, education of husband and having sons have very limited role on the fertility behavior.

Genetic Response of Citrus Rootstocks Against Selected Abiotic Stresses

Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period. Climate change and agriculture are interrelated processes and effect in number of ways. Pakistan has long spells of drought which, experts believe, are a result of climate change. Citrus fruits are one of the largest fruit crops in the world. In Pakistan ample availability of natural resources provides the favorable regime for the development of citrus industry. Citrus problem faces several problems including biotic and abiotic stresses. Role of rootstocks in citrus is one of the most debatable and discussed issues and its selection is a major consideration under planning any citrus orchard. Present research was planned for genetic characterization and evaluation of modern rootstocks tolerant/resistant to selected abiotic stresses i.e., drought and high temperature. Experiments were conducted to screen out various modern citrus rootstocks including local commercial rootstocks (Rough lemon and Sour orange) against high temperature and water stress. Drought was induced based on field capacity of citrus rootstock relative to water requirement of citrus, high temperature stress was applied with relative to five years maximum temperature range. Four-month-old uniform seedlings were selected for the stress treatments. Gas exchange parameters were recorded at four different times. Horticultural parameters, plant water status and chlorophyll fluorescence at different wavelength was recorded of stresses. From overall results it was concluded that Brazilian sour orange and Keen sour orange showed tolerance against selected stresses and Savage citrange and Yuma citrange were susceptible against the stresses. For the confirmation of tolerance, expression of stress related genes was tested. Proper detailed bioinformatic analysis were performed for the selection of primer related to heat shock protein and major intrinsic proteins. One tolerant (Brazilian sour orange) and one susceptible (Savage citrange) was selected for the genetic expression analysis against the heat shock proteins (CsHsp70, CsHsp70.1 and CsHsp90) and major intrinsic proteins (CsPIP2, CsTIP2 and CsTIP1). Genetic expression of genes showed Brazilian sour orange with high expression level of Hsp70 and Hsp90 against the temperature stress. MIP such as P1P and T1P depicted high expression against the water stress and both Hsp and MIP expression under combined drought and temperature stress. It can be concluded from the study that Brazilian sour orange was tolerant against high temperature and water stress, but Savage orange was susceptible.