Since the mid-1970s, rice consumption in Nigeria has risen tremendously at about 10% per annum due to changes in consumer preference. Most public and private sector interventions programmes at increasing the productive capacities of various factors within the system notwithstanding, domestic production has not been able to meet the local demand leading to considerable import, which today stood ...

Agricultural trade policies in Korea and Japan drew much attention during the negotiations leading to the Uruguay Round Agreements on Agriculture (URAA). Before the UR the countries and others had been using non-tariff barriers and many other intervention measures in agriculture. Korea and Japan argued vigorously for maintaining their farm import barriers and subsidies. Throughout the negotiati...

Mitochondrial protein import is a complex multistep process from synthesis of proteins in the cytosol, recognition by receptors on the organelle surface, to translocation across one or both mitochondrial membranes and assembly after removal of the targeting signal, referred to as a presequence. In plants, import has to further discriminate between mitochondria and chloroplasts. In this study, w...

Rice is one of the staple foods for more than three billion people worldwide. Rice paddies accounted for approximately 11.5% of the World's arable land area during 2012. Rice provided ~19% of the global dietary energy in recent times and its annual average consumption per capita was ~65 kg during 2010-2011. Therefore, rice area mapping and forecasting its production is important for food securi...

The specific recognition between the import receptor importin-α and the nuclear localization signals (NLSs) is crucial to ensure the selective transport of cargoes into the nucleus. NLSs contain 1 or 2 clusters of positively charged amino acids, which usually bind to the major (monopartite NLSs) or both minor and major NLS-binding sites (bipartite NLSs). In our recent study, we determined the s...

This paper identified the factors influencing the rice crop residue burning decision of the farmers and the potential of the burnt residue to generate electricity. For this study, data were collected from 400 farmers in the rice-wheat cropping system. Effects of different variables on the burning decision of rice residue are investigated through logit model. A number of factors had significant ...

In the negotiations on agriculture in the World Trade Organization, it was asserted that an importing state trading enterprise affects the domestic market but not the international market. This claim is investigated through specifying a model of intermediaries in international trade. There are two kinds of intermediaries: first, a state trading enterprise; and second, an n-firm Cournot oligopso...

China’s Biosafety Regulations – Import and Export Implications With China becoming a net importer of corn, concerns surrounding trade disruptions due to low level presence (LLP) of GM corn events not yet approved in China in commodity shipments have increased. As part of its LLP series (see related article), a case study on China points out that China’s import approval process can only commence...