BackgroundKaempferia galanga is an important medicinal plant and has been traditionally used to help restlessness, stress, anxiety, depression etc. in tropics and subtropics of Asia including Bangladesh, India, China, Japan and Indochina. Literature survey revealed that there are very less reports on neuropharmacological activity of this plant. Therefore, the present study investigated the sedative activity of different extracts of rhizome and leaf of Kaempferia galanga.MethodsThe sedative activity was evaluated by using thiopental sodium induced sleeping time, hole cross and open field tests in Swiss albino mice at the doses of 100 and 200 mg/kg body weight per oral (p.o). The acetone extract of rhizome (ACR), as well as petroleum ether fraction (PEF), chloroform fraction (CHF), methanol fraction (MEF) and acetone extract of leaf (ACL) were examined for sedative activity.ResultsIn the sedative activity study, all the extracts exhibited significant (p < 0.05 and p < 0.001) reduction of onset and duration of thiopental sodium induced sleeping time, reduction of locomotor and exploratory activities in the hole cross and open field tests. In thiopental sodium induced sleeping time test, the chloroform extract of rhizome (200 mg/kg) showed maximum 358.55 % effect in duration of loss of righting reflex, whereas the standard drug Diazepam (2 mg/kg) produced 231.42 % effect. In hole cross and open field tests, maximum 95.09 % and 95.58 % suppression of locomotor activity were observed with the acetonic leaf extract (200 mg/kg) whereas suppression of locomotor activity of the standard drug Diazepam were 71.70 % and 70.58 % respectively.ConclusionThe present study indicates that the acetone extracts of rhizome and leaf of Kaempferia galanga including fractions possess central nervous system (CNS) depressant properties which supports its use in traditional medicine. So, the plant may be further investigated to find out for its pharmacological active natural products.

The study has been conducted to assess the micro level impact of fertilizer subsidy on farming efficiency given the heterogeneous farm structures and universal subsidy policy in Bangladesh. The research utilizes primary data, which were collected through personal interview of 300 farm households located in three districts from northern part of Bangladesh. Multistage purposive sampling was followed for selecting the sampling units based on concentration of rice farming. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) reveals that the farms are inefficient in combining inputs in a cost minimizing way, although they are technically more efficient. Results from Tobit models for different farm size groups prove that fertilizer subsidy has significant impact on improving farming efficiencies for marginal and small farms in study areas while leaving insignificant impact for medium and large farms. Further increases in fertilizer subsidy will bring significant productivity increases for these smallholder farmers. Therefore, policy interventions should favor these farms for acceleration of agricultural growth.

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The dataset explicates farmer׳s perceptions about fertilizer subsidy policy in Bangladesh and the factors that affect farm level fertilizer usage. Primary data were collected from 300 farm households from three regions of the country belonging to four farm size groups i.e., marginal, small, medium and large. Dataset reveals that a major part of sampled marginal farmers was unaware that government is providing huge subsidy on the fertilizer market. Most of the marginal farmers were dissatisfied claiming the uneven distribution of subsidy benefit whereas majority of large farmers were satisfied with current policy and market prices. At the same time, output prices relative to fertilizer price received by the farmers, off-farm income and extension services were significantly affecting fertilizer use intensity of different farm size groups while subsidy policy impact was not significant.

The relative efficiency of farming under tenancy systems in Bangladesh was measured in this study. Thirty cash tenants and 30 share tenants were randomly selected for data collection through field survey method from Narayanpur and Bhabokhali villages under Sadar upazila of Mymensingh district. The functional analysis of the study was based on Boro rice. The land tenancy situation in rural Bangladesh was explored in this study with a reasonable high incidence of owners who cultivate their own land in comparison to owner-cum-tenants and tenants. A number of tenurial arrangements including sharing agreements were also revealed in the study villages. Share tenant farmers earned significantly lower net return (Tk. 19,252.18) than the cash tenant farmers (Tk. 22,815.89) from Boro rice production. However, Boro rice production was profitable from the viewpoint of both tenant operators. Finally, the study tested and confirmed that all the explanatory variables (key production inputs) included in the CobbDouglas revenue type production function model were important for explaining the variations in gross returns under both tenancy arrangements.

Commelina diffusa Burm. F. is a herbaceous tropical plant with different traditional medicinal uses. Present study is aimed to isolate the bioactive compounds from DCM-Methanol extract of the powdered whole plant of Commelina diffusa and to investigate the cytotoxic, antimicrobial and antioxidant activities of the crude extract and its twelve vacuum liquid chromatographic fraction (CD 1-12 ). Vacuum Liquid Chromatography (VLC) was employed to isolate bioactive metabolites. The physicochemical properties of the isolated compound were examined and the molecular structure was elucidated by NMR spectroscopy. Cytotoxic, antibacterial, antioxidant activities were evaluated following brine shrimp lethality bioassay, disc diffusion method and DPPH free radical scavenging assay respectively. The isolated compound was identified as steroid (stigmasterol) which had significant cytotoxic effect on vero cell line. The crude extract and its fractions (CD8-CD12) exhibited strong cytotoxicity in brine shrimp lethality bioassay having LC 50 values 3. 79, 9.19, 29.49, 16.60, 19.36, 44.58 μg/mL respectively. The crude extract showed mild to strong antibacterial activity. Fractions (CD5-CD12) showed mild to strong antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli in comparison with Kanamycin (standard). Strong antioxidant activities were found in crude extract (IC 50 value 30.52 μg/ml), CD11 (IC 50 value 39.27 μg/ml) and CD12 (IC 50 value 19.50 μg/ml). The study suggests Commelina diffusa plant extract to have strong antioxidant and cytotoxic activity which is indicative of presence of compounds with broad spectrum of curative applications. One compound namely stigmasterol has been isolated from the plant.

Market-oriented farming has been started in Bangladesh over last two decades. As a consequence, diversified agricultural products are now produced which changing the land use pattern. This study conducted in Trishal upazila of Mymensingh district, a major freshwater pond fish farming area of Bangladesh. Secondary data from different relevant government offices (Upazila Agriculture, Fisheries, and Statistical office) were collected to find out how much cropland has been converted to pond fish farming and what will be the future trend of land use in the afore mentioned area. Total land area of Trishal sub-district is 33876 ha and since last three-decade cropland has been converted to commercial freshwater fish farming. As a consequence, the area under commercial fish farming is now 4542 ha (13.41 per cent total area of Trishal upazila); which was only 1920 ha in the year of 2010. The commercial fish farming land area was converted mostly from cropland area and then a little portion came from Khas (Government owned fallow land) and fallow land area. Within six years (2010-2016), agricultural cropland area had decreased by 6.68 percent (1.11 per cent per year) and pond fish farming area had increased by 7.74 percent (1.29 percent per year). By 2021, following non-linear (quadratic) trend projection model, about 2000 ha more land will be occupied by pond fish farming.J. Bangladesh Agril. Univ. 16(2): 276-282, August 2018

The study was carried out with 73 human originated samples viz. surgical wound swab, pus, burn ulcer exudates, aural swab and diabetic ulcer exudates collected over a period of 5 months starting from September 2006 to identify and characterize enterotoxins and toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 (TSST-1) producing coagulase-positive S. aureus (CPSA) by Reverse Latex agglutination test, in which 30 (41.10%) were found as CPSA. Among the 30 CPSA isolates, 22 (73.33%), 6 (20%) and 2 (6.67%) were golden-yellow, yellow and whitish pigment producers, respectively and 29 (96.67%) isolates indicated β-hemolysis on blood agar speculating their ability to produce β-hemolysin. A total of 30 CPSA were checked for enterotoxin and TSST-1 production of which 5 (16.67%) and 1 (3.33%) isolates produced enterotoxin-A and TSST-1, respectively. Other produced multiple toxins in which 2 (6.67%) produced both enterotoxin A and enterotoxin B, 2 (6.67%) produced both enterotoxin C and enterotoxin D and 2 (6.67%) produced both enterotoxin C and TSST-1. Antibiotic resistant pattern of the CPSA indicated that 83.33% isolates were resistant to penicillin-G and 70% to sulphamethoxazole. On the other hand, the results demonstrated that gentamicin, spiramicin, ciprofloxacin, oxacillin, oxytetracycline and streptomycin might be used for the treatment of S. aureus infection. Few multiple antibiotic resistant CPSA were also identified. The prevalence of methicillin resistance S. aureus (MRSA) was 23.33%.