Production In Countries Research Articles

Australia: The Missing Piece in India’s Energy Security Puzzle

Over the last few decades, India's demand for natural gas has risen. Although the country's domestic production has increased, it can only meet a portion of the country's overall increasing demand. Approximately half of the country's gas supply comes from domestic production, with the remainder coming from imports from other countries. India's import ratio is rising to bridge the demand-supply gap. The country's reliance on foreign sources exposes its energy security to regional and global events. Thus, to ensure an uninterrupted supply of LNG, India needs to continuously analyse the geopolitical dynamics of the source countries, as well as come up with diversification strategies to meet its needs. This paper attempts to evaluate how India can benefit by increasing the LNG trade with Australia and how New Delhi can strengthen its stakes in the Indo-Pacific region.

Varietal diversity as a lever for cassava variety development: exploring varietal complementarities in Cameroon.

Cassava is an important crop for the survival of smallholder farmers in Cameroon. However, the cassava sector has a low production per unit area compared to the technological potential in this country. In this context, breeders have developed varieties based mainly on their potential in terms of yield and disease resistance. These varieties have been widely disseminated in Cameroon within the framework of development projects. However, these releases have not achieved the expected adoption and yield levels at the national level. Therefore, it appears important to rethink the determinants of dissemination with a broader examination of the cassava production system. This paper analyses varietal complementarity as a key strategy in support of optimizing the experimental and continuous use of cassava varieties by farmers in the Central and Eastern regions of Cameroon. These two regions account for 50% of the country's production. A total of 111 semi-structured interviews were conducted with farmers selected through purposive sampling in four villages in Central and Eastern Cameroon where improved varieties have been disseminated. The research revealed four types of complementarity, related to use, crop management, risk management and cultural complementarity. Our results argue for considering varietal complementarities practiced by farmers, within research and development programs to develop more effective breeding and dissemination approaches. © 2023 The Authors. Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.

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Purpose: The governments that most influence the direction of the world economy have been inconsistent in their interventions related to financing, sending contradictory signals to developing economies. Theoretical framework: Through the present study, we sought to explore the social phenomenon of reliability in the creation, destruction and mobilization of debts and savings in the MSEs of the Surco district, for this purpose, The world economy has gone through a series of events that have had a significant impact on the financial stability of many nations. Although companies were able to prevent productive activities from falling into a significant contraction, it is important to keep in mind that today's society is going through episodes of high volatility marked by a high degree of liquidity and insolvency problems among its participants (Altamirano et al., 2020). Design/methodology/approach: Qualitative approach of phenomenological - hermeneutic design, managers, assistant managers and business advisors of financial services companies in the district were interviewed. Technique is the interview follows a predetermined pattern, the arrangement of their questions and answers allows effective data collection and presentation of results. The information will be processed with Atlas.Ti. a professional software for qualitative data analysis. Findings: The study evidences the reasoning and sensitivity of the interviewees, concluding that, reliability allows reducing the time and money invested in supervising and following up in order to meet and enforce debt and savings commitments. Research, Practical & Social implications: There is a degree of sensitivity with respect to the financial information provided by MSEs in order to qualify for an operation, which is why it is necessary to cross-check such information and compare data with other entities. Originality/value: It was justified by the need to "know" the phenomenon of managers' confidence in the debts and savings of Peruvian MSEs, which, despite multiple crises, continue to contribute to the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and provide employment opportunities.

Production growth, company size, and concentration: The case of salmon

The largest companies in salmon aquaculture are rapidly getting bigger due to organic growth as well as mergers and acquisitions, and the largest are now multi-national companies. There are two main explanations for this growth: 1) An attempt to become large enough to exploit market power, or 2) Size is necessary to adopt new technologies that increase the efficient scale. In this paper, we investigate the degree of concentration in each of the main producer countries for Atlantic salmon, as well as globally for Atlantic salmon, all farmed salmon, and all salmon to account for the global nature of the market using Herfindahl-Hirschman Indexes. The results indicate a high degree of concentration in the smaller producer nations but not in Chile and Norway. Globally, the Atlantic salmon industry can be characterized as unconcentrated, and it becomes even more so when the supply of other farmed salmon and wild salmon is accounted for. Hence, the main motivation for the increased company size appears to be capacity to adopt new knowledge and technology.

Reliability in the Creation, Destruction and Mobilization of Debts and Savings

Purpose: The governments that most influence the direction of the world economy have been inconsistent in their interventions related to financing, sending contradictory signals to developing economies.
 
 Theoretical framework: Through the present study, we sought to explore the social phenomenon of reliability in the creation, destruction and mobilization of debts and savings in the MSEs of the Surco district, for this purpose, The world economy has gone through a series of events that have had a significant impact on the financial stability of many nations. Although companies were able to prevent productive activities from falling into a significant contraction, it is important to keep in mind that today's society is going through episodes of high volatility marked by a high degree of liquidity and insolvency problems among its participants (Altamirano et al., 2020).
 
 Design/methodology/approach: Qualitative approach of phenomenological - hermeneutic design, managers, assistant managers and business advisors of financial services companies in the district were interviewed. Technique is the interview follows a predetermined pattern, the arrangement of their questions and answers allows effective data collection and presentation of results. The information will be processed with Atlas.Ti. a professional software for qualitative data analysis.
 
 Findings: The study evidences the reasoning and sensitivity of the interviewees, concluding that, reliability allows reducing the time and money invested in supervising and following up in order to meet and enforce debt and savings commitments.
 
 Research, Practical & Social implications: There is a degree of sensitivity with respect to the financial information provided by MSEs in order to qualify for an operation, which is why it is necessary to cross-check such information and compare data with other entities.
 
 Originality/value: It was justified by the need to "know" the phenomenon of managers' confidence in the debts and savings of Peruvian MSEs, which, despite multiple crises, continue to contribute to the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and provide employment opportunities.

Markedly declining reproductive functional diversity of food plants in the world’s largest tropical country despite rapid cropland expansion

Cropland intensification in tropical regions is usually associated with agricultural commodity expansion that penalizes the species diversity and environmental services of natural ecosystems. However, the extent to which cropland expansion affects the reproductive functional diversity of crop arrangements remains poorly investigated. Here we examine the agricultural development of a leading agricultural producer and megadiverse country (Brazil) over the last six decades to understand the effects of agricultural expansion on the reproductive functional diversity of crops, particularly those bearing specialized traits. We used the FAO database, which provides annualized information on crop production from 1961 to 2018. Cultivated species were classified according to their reproductive traits and levels of dependence on biotic pollination, used as indicators of functional diversity. Our results show that cropland areas in Brazil expanded by 201.3% from 1961 to 2018. In particular, pollinator‐dependent crops expanded over this period by 305.2% compared to 125.3% in non-dependent crops. Expansion of monoculture farmland was remarkable, comprising 88% of the entire agricultural cropland acreage in 2018, 45% of which was represented by soybean. Additionally, cropland expansion was related to a reduction in functionally diverse crop species, which was most intense for those with specialized reproductive traits. These results indicate a threat to a diversified food production system and its resilience, given the impacts of cropland expansion on native biodiversity and the reduction in pollination services for many crops. We argue that agroecosystems in Brazil require sustainable, pollinator-friendly agricultural practices to maintain or enhance a nutritionally diversified food production system. Integrated practices that sustain agricultural cropland mosaics characterized by high reproductive functional diversity of the cultivated species can be a nature-based solution to protect natural pollinators and pollination services within a diversified food system.

High-precision multiclass classification of chili leaf disease through customized EffecientNetB4 from chili leaf images

Chili is a vital crop in India, where it is widely grown for usage in food, medicine, and cosmetics. India is the world's largest producer and exporter of chilies, a key spice crop. For the leaf disease classification, Conventional Neural Networks (CNN) are used. EfficientNetB4 is a neural network architecture that has been demonstrated to achieve high accuracy on image classification tasks while using a small number of parameters. This model is calibrated for the function of detecting leaf disease. This research demonstrates the efficacy of using deep learning architectures for the detection of leaf diseases and highlights EfficientNetB4′s potential as a powerful tool for this task. We fine-tuned the EfficientNetB4 as EfficientLeafNetB4 and proved the most efficient in the detection of chili leaf disease detection compared to ResNet-50, DenseNet-121, MobileNet-V2, and VGG-16. Our proposed fine-tuned model produced better results as compared to the above-listed techniques.The proposed approach is simple to integrate into existing agricultural systems and can assist farmers in making timely and accurate crop health decisions. Furthermore, our work provides a roadmap for future research in this field, including the investigation of novel data augmentation techniques and regularization strategies and the exploration of other deep learning architectures.Sample abstract: The agriculture sector is essential to a country's Gross domestic product (GDP). Plants are essential because they provide people with sustenance. Most farmers in poor nations do manual farming. Plant diseases that are not identified in time can cause financial losses for farmers, damaging state and national economies on a huge scale. The present study investigates High-precision Multiclass Classification of Chili leaf Disease through Customized E ffecientNetB4 from Chili Leaf Images. This research represents the popular Indian crop leaf diseases like Up curl, Down curl, Gemini virus, Cercosporin leaf spot, healthy leaf, and their identification accuracies. We fine-tuned the EfficientNetB4 as EfficientLeafNetB4 and proved the most efficiency in the detection of the chili leaf disease detection compared to ResNet-50, DenseNet-121, MobileNet-V2 and VGG-16. Our proposed fine-tuned model produced better results as compared to the above listed techniques.

Contribution of low birth weight to childhood undernutrition in India: evidence from the national family health survey 2019–2021

BackgroundInfants born with low birth weight (LBW), i.e. less than 2500g, is considered an important factor of malnutrition in Asia. In India, research related to this issue is still neglected and limited. Evidence exists that a large number of child deaths occur in India due to maternal and child malnutrition-related complications. Moreover, it has been found that the cost of malnutrition in India results in a significant reduction of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Thus, in this current context, this study aims to explore the contribution of low birth weight to childhood undernutrition in India.MethodsThe study used data from the 5th round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), a large-scale survey conducted in India. The survey collected information from 176,843 mothers and 232,920 children. The study used the last birth information (last children born 5 years preceding the survey) due to the detailed availability of maternal care information. Univariate and bivariate analyses were conducted to determine the percentage distribution of outcome variables. Multivariate logistic regression was employed to examine the association between LBW and undernutrition (stunting, wasting, and underweight). The study also used the Fairlie decomposition analysis to estimate the contribution of LBW to undernutrition among Indian children.ResultsThe results show that childhood undernutrition was higher in states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. The results of the logistic regression analysis show that infants born with low birth weight were more likely to be stunted (OR = 1.46; 95% CI: 1.41–1.50), wasted (OR = 1.33; 95% CI: 1.27–1.37), and underweight (OR = 1.76; 95% CI: 1.70–1.82) in their childhood compared to infants born without low birth weight. The findings from the decomposition analysis explained that approximately 14.8% of the difference in stunting, 10.4% in wasting, and 9.6% in underweight among children born with low birth weight after controlling for the individuals' selected characteristics.ConclusionThe findings suggest that LBW has a significant contribution to malnutrition. The study suggests that policymakers should prioritize strengthening maternal and child healthcare schemes, particularly focusing on antenatal and postnatal care, as well as kangaroo mother care at the grassroots level to reduce the burden of LBW and undernourished children.

Identification barriers to entry in the sport tourism industry: A challenge for local sports entrepreneurs

The Indonesian sports industry is required by law to contribute to the country's gross domestic product (GDP) by becoming an upstream-to-downstream industry, which refers to the total value added to sports products annually and is a component of GDP. The objectives of this study were to find the factors that become barriers to entry (and also exit) from the sports industry. The study used a qualitative method. Using the purposive method, the data were collected from 10 people including the village head, entrepreneurs, and Cisaat Village Community through FGD’s (Forum Group Disscussion) and semi-structured interviews were gathered. To analyze the data using thematic analysis. Cisaat Village was chosen as an analysis material to find barriers to entry factors, especially for sport tourism. The findings of this study are that the capital factor, the lack of knowledge and experience, human resources, are the most barrier to entry in sport tourism industry. As implications of future research, researchers can use these factors to identify how they affect sports entrepreneurs in their countries. By addressing these barriers, the sports industry can thrive and make a substantial contribution to national economic development.

Designing a dual-channel closed loop supply chain network using advertising rate and price-dependent demand: Case study in tea industry

Today, with the development of the Internet, e-commerce, and digital advertising, along with traditional advertising, have attracted the attention of many sectors and businesses, including the agricultural industry. One of the most consumed agricultural products is tea, which advertising plays a significant role in attracting more customers and improving the efficiency of its supply chain. Therefore, managing the supply chain of such product should be monitored and configured effectively considering sustainability aspects. The aim of this study is to design a dual-channel Sustainable Closed-Loop Supply Chain (SCLSC) network for tea industry for the first time. Then, a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model is proposed for optimizing the total costs, the number of emissions and the number of created job vacancies. In addition, customer demand is dependent on traditional and digital advertising rates and product prices. For solving this model in small dimensions, LP-metric method and in high dimensions, four meta-heuristic multi-objective algorithms including Simulated Annealing Algorithm (MOSA), Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO), Gray Wolf Optimizer (MOGWO) and Whale Optimization Algorithm (MOWOA) were used and their results and performance were compared. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis was performed to further evaluate some parameters such as demand. The obtained results confirmed the validity of the planned model and the correctness of its solution method. Finally, practical insights are provided for the related managers and tea producer countries.

Integrated photoelectrochemical (PEC)-forward osmosis (FO) system for hydrogen production and fertigation application

This study proposes an integrated system that combines a photoelectrochemical (PEC) system and forward osmosis (FO) system in tandem operation to address water, energy, and food (WEF) scarcity. The system utilizes a combination of ammonium sulfite and ammonium sulfate solution to represent wet flue gas desulfurization products from the ammonia scrubbing process commonly used in oil and gas producing countries. Under simulated sunlight, the sulfurous solution in the PEC system is oxidized at a reduced titania nanotube array (TNA) working electrode to produce hydrogen, a clean energy source (Energy). The oxidized sulfurous solution entering the draw solution (DS) compartment of the FO unit was then diluted when the FO system operates against simulated brackish water as the feed solution (FS, Water). The DS effluent is recirculated to ensure continuous operation of both PEC and FO systems. At a certain point in time, the DS effluent is also used as a cultivation solution for basil plants, the growth is visually more favorable compared to those supplied with tap water (Food). A concentrated DS (0.8:0.2 ratio of (NH4)2SO3:(NH4)2SO4) showed excellent water desalination performance. It had a high water flux of 17 LMH with 11.8 % water recovery, highest salt rejection (98.6 % for Na+ and 98.3 for Cl−), and lowest reverse solute flux (RSF) (3.5 g‧m−2‧h−1 for SO42−, 5.25 g‧m−2‧h−1 for SO32−, 3.1 g‧m−2‧h−1 for NH4+) against 5 g‧L−1 NaCl FS for 5 h, with a cathodic current density of 0.15 A‧cm−2. Overall, this study demonstrates the successful implementation of a bench-scale integrated system that produces tangible outcomes for water, energy, and food.

The Role of the Sustainable Development Concept in Shaping Energy Policy Transformations in the Caspian Region Countries

The article explores the challenges associated with the adaptation of energy policies in the Caspian region to the principles of sustainable development. In the contemporary context, the oil and gas resources of Caspian countries play a vital role in national economic development and ensuring energy security for key importing nations amidst the global reshuffling of energy flows. The author analyzes the transformative changes brought about by the energy transition within the structure of the global fuel and energy complex.The study contributes to the field by proposing an integrated approach to promoting energy sustainability in energy-exporting countries. This approach entails the adaptation of the oil and gas sector to decarbonization processes, while simultaneously embracing the development of carbon-free energy sources within a dynamically evolving geopolitical landscape. The research endeavor seeks to determine the main directions for transforming the energy policies of oil and gas producing countries in the Caspian region in response to imperatives of sustainable development.At present, the most relevant aspects of energy policy in the Caspian countries involve the further development of oil and gas projects, strict adherence to environmental standards and regulations, ensuring energy efficiency across the entire production chain, and the implementation of "operational decarbonization" measures and carbon capture and storage technologies to reduce the carbon footprint of the fuel and energy complex. Additionally, to mitigate climate risks in the Caspian region, strategic energy policy priorities should encompass resource diversification towards the advancement of carbon-free generation based on renewable energy sources.The study assesses the potential of the Caspian countries not only in implementing "operational decarbonization" measures but also in developing renewable and low-carbon energy sources. Furthermore, it examines the prospects for realizing ambitious "green" projects in the region.

Severity Stage Identification and Pest Detection of Tomato Disease Using Deep Learning

In Bangladesh, most people depend on agriculture for their livelihood. The country's economy and agricultural production are hampered if plants are affected by diseases. Crop pests also disrupt agricultural production. So, this paper proposes leaf disease, disease severity stage, and pest detection strategies with suggestions for prevention strategies using five notable Convolutional Neural Network models (CNN) such as VGG16, Resnet50, AlexNet, EfficientNetB2, and EfficientNetB3. This paper uses a dataset of tomato leaves consisting of 41,763 images which cover 10 classes of tomato disease, and a dataset of pests consisting of 4,271 images which cover 8 classes of pests. Firstly, these models are used for the classification of diseases and pests. Then disease and pest prevention techniques are shown. For disease and pest detection, EfficientNetB3 gives the best accuracy for training (99.85%), (99.80%), and validation (97.85%), (97.45%) respectively. For severity stage identification, AlexNet gives the best accuracy for training (69.02%) and validation (72.49%).

CARBON EMISSIONS RATE IN CENTRAL ASIAN COUNTRIES

Many tasks related to the development of sustainable electric energy, sustainable production, improvement of the population's well-being, improvement of the economic situation of the population were solved, and some priority tasks for the coming decades were determined. There is no doubt that in order to improve the economic situation of the country, we need to change our attitude towards nature, the ideas of new green economy and sustainable development should be discussed in the general council of all countries. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are part of the problem that all countries are struggling to identify and reduce emissions. While studying and discussing the manuscripts of advanced countries, we tried to apply them to Uzbekistan. To do this we have used the comparative analysis methods. By contrasting the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in central Asian countries in different sections.This study analyzes the impact of carbon dioxide (CO2) gas on the country's gross domestic product and how much it has been in recent years. Also, the factors causing the release of carbon dioxide gas into the air are analyzed and several new opinions and suggestions are mentioned. In one word, in this article we have paid attention mostly CO2 emissions, renewable energy and its importance for the central Asian countries and their border countries, effects of carbon dioxide to the gross domestic products of the central Asian countries, types of CO2 emissions and their pros and cons for the countries especially Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan.

Economic System of Islām as a Panacea to Economic Recession in Nigeria ‎

The National Bureau of statistics in July 2016 officially announced that Nigeria has entered into a recession, its first in 29 years. According to the data provided by the World Bank, the most recent time that the nation saw such a significant instance of economic downturn was while Ibrahim Babangida was in power. During that time period, the economy of Nigeria had a decline of 0.51% in the first quarter of 1987 and 0.82% in the second quarter of the same year. The disaggregation of the results for 2016 into its individual quarters revealed the sharpest decline, which was 2.4 percent, and a turning point after that. This is going by the manifestation of economic hardships experienced by the populace, even up to this moment. In point of fact, Nigeria's economy went from a level of economic buoyancy to a level of economic recession in the second quarter of 2016, and it has maintained negative growths in all quarters of that year up to 2017. This downward trend is expected to continue throughout 2017. In a bid to cushion the effect of this situation, the government in the short and medium terms took some measures (policies and reforms) to reverse the recession and put it on the path of growth reliance. In spite of these encouraging developments and despite the fact that it has been two years since the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) officially declared that Nigeria had emerged from recession in its quarterly report on the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the country's economic situation is still difficult, particularly with regard to the continued high cost of food. For a long-term solution, this paper, therefore, examines some measures of Islamic economic system, which is recession proof, due to the fact that it is basically premised on the fundamental sources of Islam, Sharī῾ah. The paper concludes that if these measures are taken into consideration by the government, it will not only lift the economy out of its current phase but will also guarantee a secure economy. The paper adopts analytical research methods, using majorly secondary data collection.

Comprehensive biofuel policy analysis framework: A novel approach evaluating the policy influences

The use of biofuel as an alternative to petroleum-based fuels was started in the 1970s in response to the oil crisis. In last two decades, there has been a massive rise in global utilization of biofuels which represents its growing importance as an alternative fuel source. This rise is attributed to the supportive biofuel policies which stimulate the growth in biofuel production and utilization. The biofuel policy mechanism of major producing countries got specific attention in this study. Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, European Union, India, Japan, Malaysia and the USA jointly controlled 99% of the global biofuel production and utilization. Several policy measures from creating and sustaining biofuel demand to establishing supportive economic and regulatory frameworks are already in place in the aforementioned countries. The study performs compositional policy analysis by developing a framework termed as ‘Comprehensive Biofuel Policy Analysis Framework’. A policy score named ‘Total Policy Measure Support’ is the outcome of the analysis. It reveals that countries with higher scores have better-performing biofuel sectors than the countries with low scores. Countries with moderate scores have inconsistency between their value and biofuel sector performance. It is linked with the absence or less than required focus on single or multiple policy components resulting in an imbalance in the policy framework. This underlines the importance of a balanced policy framework. If there is a lesser or no balance between the different policy components, biofuel production and utilization cannot grow despite high Total Policy Measure Support scores.

REVIEW OF PRINCIPLES OF QUANTITATIVE RESTRICTIONS ON DISPUTE SETTLEMENT“EU AND US LAWSUIT FOR THE INDONESIAN GOVERNMENT'S NICKEL EXPORT BAN POLICY BY THE WTO DISPUTE SETTLEMENT BODY

The Government of Indonesia through Regulation of the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Number 11 of 2019 concerning the second Amendment to Regulation of the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Number 25 of 2018 concerning Coal Mining and Mineral Exploitation (Permen ESDM 11/2019) decided to stop exporting nickel ore from from 1 January 2020. This regulation is considered to violate the Quantitative Restriction Principle in Article XI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and is being demanded by the European Union against the Dispute Settlement Body of the World Trade Organization (DSB WTO). This article analyzes the scope of Article XI of the GATT and the conformity of the nickel ore export ban regulation with justification in the GATT regulatory framework. This article uses a normative juridical approach, namely legal research conducted through research on library materials and secondary data. This research is descriptive analytical in nature that analyzes related legal instruments, to provide a thorough and systematic understanding of the scope and application of the Quantitative Restriction Principle.This study shows the results that the Interpretation of Article XI: 1 GATT, Indonesia's export ban regulations can be said to be incompatible with the principle of a quantitative restriction ban. Indonesia in implementing a nickel ore export ban has a background to maintain Indonesia's nickel supply which has been depleting. Due to the depletion of Indonesia's nickel supply, the government decided to downstream and industrialize nickel ore. This background is in line with the exception in Article XI:2 (a) which allows export restrictions for a country's essential products. Even so, based on Article XI: 2 (a), this export restriction must be implemented temporarily.

Novel Brazilian hop (Humulus lupulus L.) extracts through supercritical CO2 extraction: Enhancing hop processing for greater sustainability

Hop cultivation has been increasing in the past decade in Brazil, demanding a better understanding of how the processing influences the national hop varieties. Despite the hop process being well-established in the producer countries, there is still room for optimization to reduce energy consumption for a more sustainable process. This study’s main purpose was to understand the influence of drying and supercritical CO2 extraction on the quality of hop extracts. The hop quality during drying was evaluated regarding color, bitter acids, xanthohumol, total essential oil content, and volatile profile. Supercritical CO2 extraction yields, and bitter acid recovery were assessed by HPLC in a range of different temperatures (40 or 60 °C) and pressure (15, 20, 25, or 30 MPa) conditions. Hop processing was optimized to produce a greater extract quality from a Brazilian hop variety, saving energy and solvent consumption, and consequently, reducing the process footprint. Furthermore, this study established supercritical CO2 extraction conditions for Brazilian hop extract production, offering the national beer industry an alternative to overpriced products.

Exploring the potential of Bornean polypore fungi as biological control agents against pathogenic Ganoderma boninense causing basal stem rot in oil palm

Basal stem rot due to a fungal pathogen, Ganoderma boninense, is one of the most devastating diseases in oil palm throughout the major palm oil producer countries. This study investigated the potential of polypore fungi as biological control agents against pathogenic G. boninense in oil palm. In vitro antagonistic screening of selected non-pathogenic polypore fungi was performed. Based on in planta fungi inoculation on oil palm seedlings, eight of the 21 fungi isolates tested (GL01, GL01, RDC06, RDC24, SRP11, SRP12, SRP17, and SRP18) were non-pathogenic. In vitro antagonistic assays against G. boninense revealed that the percentage inhibition of radial growth (PIRG) in dual culture assay for SRP11 (69.7%), SRP17 (67.3%), and SRP18 (72.7%) was relatively high. Percentage inhibition of diameter growth (PIDG) in volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in dual plate assay of SRP11, SRP17, and SRP18 isolates were 43.2%, 51.6%, and 52.1%, respectively. Molecular identification using the internal transcribed spacer gene sequences of SRP11, SRP17, and SRP18 isolates revealed that they were Fomes sp., Trametes elegans, and Trametes lactinea, respectively.

BANK LENDING AS A FACTOR IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SMALL AND MEDIUM-SIZED BUSINESSES IN KAZAKHSTAN

In modern conditions, one of the urgent tasks of the Republic of Kazakhstan is to maximise the development of small and medium-sized businesses. Small and medium business has a direct impact on the economic well-being of the state. And it largely depends on solving the problems of employment, filling the domestic market with domestic goods, replenishing the state budget and creating a competitive environment. The development of small and medium-sized businesses is a key tool for economic growth and socio-political modernisation.
 This article examines the dynamics of small and medium-sized business development in Kazakhstan, including indicators such as the contribution of small and medium-sized businesses to the country's gross domestic product, the number of small and medium-sized businesses registered and operating, and the number of people employed in this area, and analyses small and medium-sized businesses lending by second-tier banks for 2018-2020, which covers the period before the pandemic and during the pandemic. During the period of restrictive measures, the state provided support to small and medium-sized businesses in the form of tax exemptions, interest relief on loans previously obtained by businesses, and relief on rent payments. However, despite this, problems have been identified in this aspect. In order to eliminate the identified problems of small and medium-sized business lending, prospective directions for further development of small and medium-sized enterprises in the Republic of Kazakhstan have been developed.