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.

Increasing Rice Productivity Through System of Rice Intensification Sri at District Swat

System of rice intensification (SRI) has been recently developed in which during the vegetative growth period, soil is kept in moist condition after transplanting young seedling singly in square pattern with spacing 25 × 25 cm2. SRI is gaining recognition by farmers of many rice growing regions of the world for raising their rice productivity under limited water supply. However information on (SRI) is limited in Pakistan. Therefore, an on- farm study was conducted during 2010 and 2011 with an objective to access the performance of different chemical fertilizers on three local rice varieties under SRI and conventional management practices at Agricultural Research Institute (North) Mingora (Swat). The experiment was laid out in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with split plot arrangement and three replications. The two cultural practices, i.e., (1) SRI: transplanting 15 days old single seedling in a square arrangement with 25 × 25 cm2 spacing, and during the vegetative growth period, keeping the soil in moist condition, and (2) Traditional management practices, and having three rice cultivars and the names were (1) Dilrosh-97, (2) JP-5, and (3) Fakhre Malakand were assigned to main plots, whereas the fertilizer treatments were assigned to sub-plots (4m × 5m). Treatments of fertilizer were comprised, T1 = Control, T2 = 100-0-0-0 kg N-P2O5-K2O-Zn ha-1, T3 = 100-60-0-0 kg N-P2O5-K2O-Zn ha-1, T4 = 100-60-40-0 kg N-P2O5-K2O-Zn ha-1, and T5 = 100-60-40-20 kg N-P2O5-K2O-Zn ha-1. Before transplanting the phosphorous and potassium and half of the nitrogen fertilizers were incorporated into the soil. 7-10 days after transplanting zinc was applied,and the remaining half of N and P was applied in two equal splits at 25-30 days and 45-55 days after transplanting.The results showed statistically significant increase in panicles plant-1 number,tillers plant-1 number, height of plant, length of panicle, number of grains panicle-1, biological yield, paddy yield,thousand-grain weight,harvest index and dry weight of plant enhanced by 9.4%, 8.9%, 10.3%, 9.9%, 9.6%, 6.9%, 4.4%, 1.3%, 9.3% and 15.6% respectively under SRI as compared to the conventional cultivation practices. Among rice varieties Fakhre- Malakand outperformed the other rice varieties under the SRI practices. Similarly, compared to control, T5 improved panicles plant-1 number,height of plant, tillers plant-1 number , length of panicle, number of grains panicle-1, hilum yield, paddy yield, harvest index, thousand-grain weight and dry weight of plant of rice by 38.6%, 37.9%, 34.4%, 37.7%, 40.1%, 12.4%, 39.0%, 21.9%, 39.5%, and 66.1% respectively. It may be concluded from the study that system of rice intensification is a better method for rice cultivation as water accessibility is the major problem in rice production at district Swat. Furthermore, rice variety, Fakhre Malakand proved to be a suitable variety under SRI management practice and may be used to obtain higher rice production, where availability of irrigation water is limited.