A Study of Stress Factors and Their Impact on Students’ Academic Performance at University Level

The main emphasis of the study is on the academic performance and the stress management in applied science among the students of Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Sindh University Campus Dadu. What is the level of stress on the academic success of the students? How does it affect their lifestyle and health? This is what the research study covers to counteract the general stress among the students. The purpose of the study is to inquire and bring light to measure and check the present stress among students of the university. While doing the research a quantitative method was applied for collecting and analyzing the data. The Questionnaires were distributed among different students for this purpose. Innumerable factors of stress were found in the results and the factors were grouped in four categories which are; -Environmental Factors, Academic Factors, and Personal Factors. In environmental factors, the stress was about the happening the fate in the future. The students were found worried about future that what would happen about their fate? How it will happen? What is about to happen? When they came into contact with the new people it raised their stress. Also the class workload was the main reason for the stress among the students regarding academic factors. When the students were experiencing the workload of the class the group of the students came under stress. The last factor was a personal factor which was mainly due to the financial problem among the students. The stress of all categories can be managed through stress management courses and doing different extracurricular activities which will help to divert the attention of the students on different occasions. This study has drawn significant conclusions and Suggests further measures for practitioners which could help other to manage stress. The limitations are also mentioned so that those who are conducting research for the similar cases can extract better results and ways of curbing stress. A survey questionnaire was designed to collect the response from students, the five-point Likert scale was used from strongly agree to strongly disagree. SPSS-21 version was used to interpret the results through different quantitative techniques like descriptive, regression, and correlation. ____________

Genetic Basis of Variation for Quantitative Traits Related to Boll, Seed Cotton Yield and Fibre Quality in Gossypium Hirsutuml.

Pakistan ranks at 4th position with respect to global area and production of cotton, however the yield level is still low as compared to other major cotton producing countries. There are so many pathways which contribute to the final yield of cotton plant, one of which may be the exploitation and selection for some basic traits related to boll. Keeping in view the importance of within-boll yield components in determining the final yield, present study was carried out in research area of the Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad to estimate the genetic basis of various yield and quality attributes, combining ability and heterotic manifestation and correlation of agronomic, boll related and fibre quality traits in Gossypium hirsutum L. For this study two crosses were made involving four contrasting parents with respect to seed cotton yield and fibre quality characters. Crosses were made following triple test cross model and data on various agronomic, boll related and fibre quality traits were recorded and analyzed. Significant amount of epistatic interaction was found to be involved in expression of almost all the traits. The additive variance was greater in magnitude that dominance variance for traits like number of bolls per plant, seed cotton yield per plant, lint percentage, lint index, fibre fineness, lint mass per boll and lint mass per seed resulting in partial degree of dominance for these traits. While dominance variance was found to be greater in magnitude than additive variance for average boll weight, fibre length, fibre strength, number of seeds per boll, seed mass per boll, seed index, seed volume and seed surface area resulting in over-dominance type of gene action. Seed density showed complete dominance of the genes. BH-89 showed highest positive GCA effects for most of the traits. Among testers, CIM-1100, CIM-496and FH- 634 showed significant GCA effects for most of the traits. NIAB-999 × CIM-70 proved to be the best regarding seed cotton yield per plant and seed surface area. Combination of S- 12 with (NIAB-228 × BH-160) showed maximum value regarding lint percentage, fibre length, seed volume and seed surface area, it also proved to be the best for seed density when combined with NIAB-228. The highest value of mid and better parent heterosis regarding number of bolls per plant (43.60% and 25.52%), seed cotton yield per plant (61.41% and 30.67%) and seed number per boll (17.28% and 16.14%) was observed for the hybrid BH-89 × CIM-496. Correlation studies revealed that bolls per plant were positively associated with seed cotton yield. Average boll weight showed significant positive correlation fibre strength and seed cotton yield. In the second cross, number of bolls per plant showed positive correlation with boll weight, fibre strength and seed cotton yield. Number of seeds per boll was positively associated with lint percentage, fibre length and seed cotton yield. Fibre length and fibre fineness were negatively correlated. Fibre length showed positive association with seed cotton yield.