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.

Utilization of Industrial Waste Cheese Whey for the Biosynthesis of B-Galactosidase.

The dairy industry is associated with the production of contaminated waste water. The whey disposal remains a serious pollution problem for dairy industry, particularly in developing countries. Direct disposal of whey in the environment creates serious pollution problems, it destroys the physical and chemical structure of soil which decreases the crops yield and if discarded in water bodies, it reduces the aquatic life. The best solution to this environmental problem is the enzymatic hydrolysis of whey by using β-galactosidase which catalyses the hydrolysis of lactose (main constituent of whey) into its basic monomers, glucose and galactose. β-galactosidase can be obtained from different sources like plants, animals and microorganisms whereas bacterial β-galactosidase is generally regarded as safe. The basic aim of present research is to investigate the utilization of dairy industrial waste (cheese whey) as a substrate for the biosynthesis of β-galactosidase to convert environmental waste into useful biomaterial from a noval β-galactosidase producing bacterial isolate from Antarctica. Two hundred and thirty five isolates were obtained from five samples (ice, water and microbial mats) collected from different sites of Antarctica and screened for their ability to produce β-galactosidase by using X-gal. A total of 61 bacterial isolates which turned blue on X-gal were then cultured in R2 medium and Marine medium aseptically at 10˚C for one month. The most potent bacterial isolates were identified using a polyphasic taxonomical approach. Cells were found strictly aerobic, Gram negative, rod shaped, motile and formed creamy white, half transparent colonies. Growth occurred at 4°C to 28°C with an optimum at 20°C, with 0 – 5.0 % (w/v) NaCl (optimum at 0 - 1.0 %) and at pH 4.0 – 11.0 (optimum at pH 7.0 - 9.0). The major fatty acid was C18:1 ω7c. Respiratory quinone was ubiquinone 10 (Q-10). The DNA G+C content was 60.7 %. The polar lipids were phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylmethanolamine in addition to three unidentified lipids, one unknown glycolipid, and five unidentified phospholipids. Comparative analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences showed highest sequence similarity (98.1 %) to Pararhizobium giardinii H152T, P. herbae CCBAU 83011T, and “P. polonicum” F5.1T. In silico average nucleotide identity (ANI) and genome-to-genome distance calculator (GGDC) showed 81.1 % identity (ANI) and 22.6 % identity (GGDC) to the closest relative, “P. polonicum” F5.1T. On the basis of phenotypic, phylogenetic, genomic and chemotaxonomic data, the two strains represent a novel species of the genus Pararhizobium, for which the name Pararhizobium antarcticum sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is NAQVI 59T LSRP00000000 (=DSMZ 103442T = LMG29675T). Strains NAQVI-58 and NAQVI-59T showed the highest enzyme production (0.21 U/ml) for strain NAQVI-58 and (0.33 U/ml) for strain NAQVI-59 with cheese whey as a substrate at pH (7), 28 ˚C and after 48 hours of incubation respectively. In this study, a new Pararhizobium sp. is discovered by using dairy industrial waste cheese whey as a substrate which is further used for the production of β-galactosidase.