Purpose – Since the formal establishment of diplomatic relations between China and South Korea in 1992, bilateral trade between China and South Korea has been developing steadily. To meet the trend of economic globalization and regional economic integration, the governments of China and South Korea formally signed the China-Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in 2015. Taking the recent development of China-Korea trade in the new era as an entry point, this paper proposes suggestions for promoting the sustainable development of bilateral trade by analyzing the current situation of China-Korea trade development. Design/Methodology/Approach – This paper firstly analyzes the development status of China-Korea FTA by combing the data from the Ministry of Commerce of China, and further analyzes the current situation of bilateral trade between China and South Korea by quantitative analysis, and studies the specific impact of China-Korea FTA on the import and export trade between the two countries; finally concludes the above study and makes suggestions. Findings – The development of China-Korea FTA has an obvious role in promoting the trade between the two countries and helps to promote the economic development of both countries. Suggestions include: China and Korea should further expand the depth of bilateral trade cooperation; use the China-Korea FTA to realize the upgrading of industrial structure of both countries; use the China-Korea FTA to expand bilateral cooperation in foreign investment services. Research Implications – The study of the trade effects of the FTA between China and Korea helps both countries to make full use of the opportunities brought by the establishment of the FTA, identify the problems in bilateral trade between China and Korea, and provide policy recommendations for achieving a win-win situation for both countries.

Lactic acid bacteria produce different types of inhibitory compound that have a bactericidal effect. The inhibitory compounds produced include metabolic end products, bacteriocins that are antimicrobial peptides with antibiotic effect, hydrogen peroxides and numerous organic acids depending on their fermentation pathway. The inhibitory activity by bacteriocins produced by lactic acid bacteria is diverse, comprising of strains capable of inhibiting different types of Gram-positive microorganisms to those that affect only organism of close general. With the growing concern over the spread of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms and the possibility of current therapies becoming inefficient, it is imperative to find antibiotics alternatives. In food preservation, naturally occurring peptides with antimicrobial activity are favoured over chemical preservatives a more reason why there should be a holistic approach to taking advantage of bacteriocinogenic bacteria in medicine and food industry. This review focuses on the application of bacteriocin in food preservation, food industry, livestock and medicine.

Climate change is considered as a major threat for agricultural production in Vietnam, particularly for coffee production, one of the most important agricultural sectors of the country. To effectively cope with the negative impacts of climate change on coffee production, the ways of understanding and also adequate responses by farmers on the climate change are very important. This paper aims to provide empirical insights into the farmers’ perception of climate change and their adaptation practices to its impacts on coffee production. The results from the questionnaire survey of 151 smallholder coffee farmers in Dak Nong province reveal the fact that the farmers understood the progress and impact of climate change through their observation into their surrounding areas. Coffee growers’ observation about the climate variability is remarkably consistent with the statistical data from the meteorological authority. However, this research revealed that their capacity to cope with climate change was relatively limited, mostly based on their own resources. This research suggests that more studies are required to examine the application of environmentally sustainable approaches to cope with climate changes.

This study was undertaken to find out national level changes in area, production and yield of two major staple crops wheat and potato in Bangladesh. The time series of secondary data was collected from yearbook of agricultural statistics under Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and used for the statistical analysis during the thirty-year period of 1989/90-2018/19. Moreover, selected data were divided into two groups and regarded as segment (1989/90-2003/04, 2005/06-2018/19) to examine the significant level in each crop. The results of different statistical techniques showed that wheat cultivated area and production were satisfactory level but yield was not too much standard in context of country demand. In the case of potato, yield as well as cultivated area and production were crossed the significant level and fulfilled the demand of population. In recent few years, the ratio of potato production rapidly increased, compared with the cultivation area. Based on segment (period) analysis, at the first half wheat production was always below, compared with the area but second half nine years saw slightly improved. On the other hand, in both segment potato growth rate in area, production and yield were increased throughout the study period. The highest instability was also shown in area, production and yield of potato during whole as well as segmented period. There was always a positive relationship between country’s demand and supply. Both wheat and potato are considered as staple crops and based on the productive capability over cultivated area, potato showed the higher productivity for the country of Bangladesh. In consequences, potato consuming demand also rapidly increased all over the country, compared with past respectively.

Tourism is not only a cultural service but also a resource consuming industry. Landscape function framework is a powerful tool to show the relationship between nature and people. This study collects 50 documents around the world to analyze the relationship between the 4 functional groups of the landscape (regulatory functions, production and supply functions, resident functions, information and entertainment functions) and the tourism industry. On that basis, we created an establishment for practical contact analysis of the goods and services of the landscape for tourism development in Moc Chau plateau, Vietnam. Research results show that tourism is an economic sector that benefits from the landscape and has a clear resource orientation. Moc Chau plateau has rich tourism resources and has the conditions to develop various types of tourism, especially cultural tourism based on community and resort tourism. The two cultural functions and the providing functions are the two most important functional groups for the tourism development of Moc Chau district, bringing the two most important tourism icons for Moc Chau, a green steppe, cool milk benevolent and also a district rich in national culture. From these conclusions, the authors give recommendations and notable points about landscapes in the tourism industry, especially in places with topography like Moc Chau.

The main aim of the present study is to investigate the factors that are considered affecting the adoption of Activity-Based Costing (ABC) in the autonomous public universities in Vietnam. A quantitative research was carried out. The data was collected through an online questionnaire survey between June 2020 and September 2020 addressed to the target respondents comprising 168 managers and accountants from 23 autonomous public universities in Vietnam, which participated in the resolution project No. 77/NQ-CP of the Vietnamese government on the pilot renovation of operational mechanisms of public tertiary education institutions during the period of four years, from 2014 to 2017. The findings resulted from hypothesis testing by a binary regression analysis based on the SPSS 20.0 software show that training, competition, support of top manager, and university size are the four main factors that positively affect the adoption of Activity-Based Costing (ABC) in studied universities. On the other hand, no statistically significant impact was found on two other variables, namely the variety of services provided and the usefulness of cost information factors. From the research results, discussions and policy recommendations have been presented to promote the adoption of Activity-Based Costing (ABC) in Vietnamese autonomous public universities in the coming time.

This empirical research is aimed at testing the relationship of the big five personality traits namely openness to experience, extraversion, consciousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and risk aversion with the investment intention of individual investors belonging to Balochistan, Pakistan. The primary data is collected through a self-administered questionnaire (a structured form that consists of a series of closed-ended and open-ended questions) from a sample of 397 active individual investors belonging to different districts of the province. The data is empirically analyzed by applying the Partial Least Square (PLS) path modeling technique by using the estimation package available in Smart-PLS. The findings of this study suggest that all the variables are statistically significant with investors’ investment intention with risk aversion as the strongest predictor. Moreover, openness to experience, extraversion, consciousness, agreeableness, and risk are significantly and positively related to an investor’s investment intention, whereas neuroticism is negatively related to an investor’s investment intention. The results extended by this study can be used by financial planners and investment bankers to channelize the available financial resources in diversified portfolios. The results will help financial planners to make available diverse investment alternatives for investors in Balochistan, thus catering to their unique needs. Academia must offer courses on contemporary finance paradigm based on behavioral finance to enable future business graduates to make wise financial decisions.

The study attempts to analyze the impact of firm’s risk on capital structure in the context of seasonal and non-seasonal businesses. We use two independent variables namely credit risk and systematic risk and one dependent variable to explore this connection. Sugar sector is taken as seasonal while the textile sector as non-seasonal businesses. The panel data of twenty-five firms from each sector are taken ranging for the period of 2012 to 2019 which has been retrieved from their annual reports for empirical analysis of the study. The results reveal the negative impact of credit risk on capital structure in both types of businesses. Increasing (decreasing) one point of credit risk causes a decrease (increase) leverage ratio by 0.27 points for seasonal while increasing (decreasing) one point of credit risk causes to decrease (increase) leverage by 0.15 points for non-seasonal businesses. Furthermore, the study shows positive impact of systematic risk on leverage ratio in non-seasonal business and no impact in seasonal business. Any increase (decrease) in the systematic risk causes an incline (decline) leverage ratio by 2.68 units for non-seasonal businesses. The study provides a guideline to managers for risk management in businesses. The research focusses on theoretical as well as managerial and policy implications on risk management in businesses.

High-quality and high-phytonutrient watermelon fruits have strong market opportunities besides their health related benefits. Hence, investigating quality and nutritional related traits of watermelon genetic resources could provide important baseline data in breeding for increased lycopene content thereby increasing the marketability of watermelon. To this end, we have examined some fruit morphological traits and lycopene content of 105 genetic resources. Seeds, originally obtained from 22+ countries, were obtained from the National Agrobiodiversity Center, Jeonju, South Korea, grown in an experimental field and harvested at a fully mature stage. The size of pistil scar (SPS), the width of stripes (WS), weight of fruit (WF), length of fruit (LF), width of fruit (WIF), the thickness of pericarp (TP), soluble solids content (SSC), fruit shape in longitudinal section, ground color of skin, the intensity of the green color of skin, fruit shape at the apical part, grooving distribution, conspicuousness of stripes, and main color of the flesh were recorded on the field and inside laboratory and the lycopene was measured using spectrophotometric and HPLC methods. Watermelon fruits have shown a diverse morphological characters. Red and pink fleshed fruits dominated in the entire collections. Fruits with higher thickness of rind were found to exhibit less soluble solid content (SSC). Korean origin fruits were characterized by intermediate SSC while the United States of America (USA), Russia (RUS), Tajikistan (TJK), Turkmenistan (TKM), Taiwan (TWN), and Uruguay (URY) originated fruits had the highest SSC. The lycopene content varied between 41.37 and 182.82 ㎍/g, 2.81 and 163.72 ㎍/g, and 3.54 and 255.47 ㎍/g using HPLC, UV-Vis spectrophotometer, and microplate reader spectrophotometer, respectively. Red- and pink-fleshed fruits had the highest levels of lycopene content compared to the yellow- and orange-fleshed. Lycopene content had a significant positive correlation with SSC, however, no correlations were detected between lycopene and other quantitative fruit morphological characters. Our study demonstrated high diversity exists in fruit morphological traits and lycopene content of the germplasm collections which provide beneficial baseline data for a future breeding program and utilization of watermelon germplasm collections in gene banks for the maintenance and improvement of the current levels of production, marketability, and health-related benefit of watermelon fruits.