Pandemic Impact on the Travels and Tourism Sector of Nepal

The travel and tours enterprise were badly affected due to pandemics. In the aftermath of high restrictions on human movement, travel-based entrepreneurs were highly impacted due to lockdown. Due to pandemic, highly impacted into earning-saving, lack of supportive working conditions, lower self-capacity, and lack of recovery budget and policies, the travel and tours-based entrepreneurs were highly impacted. The study reflected the impact of pandemics on travel and tours, major constraints, and a possible way forward to sustaining. The research explores what are the major existing practices of sustaining travel and tours entrepreneurs during pandemics, what factors can contribute to building bounce-back capacities of travel and tours entrepreneurs’ sustainability. Above forty-four, snowball-based sampling was done from major travel and tours entrepreneurs, Pokhara-Nepal. A structure-based open-ended questionnaire, key informant interviews, and in-person-based discussion were applied in the method of study. Used the content analysis along with a recap of the research question, undertake bracketing to identify biases, operationalize variables with develop a coding, and code the data with undertaking analysis while qualitative analysis, and multiple regression facilitated on quantitative analysis to finalize the discussion. The study reflects that self-saving, social support, state and financial institutions recovery support, social behavior and change communication, full vaccination practices, and self-accountable tourist behavior are highly expectable conditions to the sustainability of travel and torus entrepreneurship in the learning area. The study concludes that self-saving capacity can contribute to bounce-back capacity for every entrepreneur. Social support and socioeconomic recovery packages were also contributing to sustaining travel and tours in the study area. Self-saving condition and capacity is higher bounce back capacity compared to non-saved entrepreneurs in the study area. Social support, socioeconomic recovery practices, and recovery packages from state and financial institutions were not at the higher level as expected.

Antimicrobial and Anticancer Potential of Fungus Induced Peptides and Isolation of Related Genes from Psoralea Corylifolia

Extensive use of antimicrobials has led to evolution of bacterial resistance. Pathogenic exposure of plants stimulates the synthesis of an array of proteins and peptides against the pathogenic micro-organisms which are potential sources for the development of new pharmacological formulations to treat different diseases. The present project was devoted to screening of a medicinal plant Psoralea corylifolia (P. corylifolia) for antifungal and antibacterial activites of seeds and seedlings under Fusarium solani stress. Also seed and seedling protein extracts obtained at different time intervals after the fungal stress were evaluated for cytotoxic, mutagenic and antioxidant activities. Maximum antimicrobial activity was shown against Escherichia coli and Pasteurella multocida among bacterial strains and Fusarium solani and Trichoderma harzianum among fungal strains. Minimum inhibitory concentrations of protein extracts ranged in 0.125-0.25 µM concentration. A peptide of 9 kDa was isolated from SDS-PAGE analysis at 8 hour post induction that could have therapeutic potential in future. P. corylifolia seeds crude extract and eight hour induced protein extract possessed significant antitumor and cytotoxic activities (P < 0.05). Protein extracts showed potential antioxidant activity with P < 0.05. Mutagenic activity of P. corylifolia was also evaluated and they were also found to be non-mutagenic. Six defensin genes were amplified from DNA isolated from P. corylifolia. In conclusion, the present study has allowed characterization of the bioactive potential of P. corylifolia. Further study of isolated peptides and genes could unveil the defense mechanism against cancer and development of healthier transgenic plants.