ABSTRACTThe level of polymorphism in chili was studied using ISSR marker. Polymorphism of sixteen chili varieties was evaluated with 15 ISSR primers. These 15 ISSR primers have generated 136 DNA bands, 102 being polymorphic, with an average of 9.06 bands per primer. The evaluation of the dendrogram obtained by UPGMA allowed the differentiation of all the varieties. Four varieties were separated in distinct group in which showed complete correspondence to its observed characters. DNA profile of 16 chili varieties based on ISSR marker revealed the potential of digital fingerprints of all varieties examined. 

The areas of intensive rice production in the Mekong delta, Vietnam, have been rapidly enlarged but rice yield tend to be declined or need more fertilizers . Therefore, the degradation of soil fertility in this system can be one of the most important factors contributing to the yield decline, Information on soil fertility and recommendations on improving soil constraints will provide basic data for proper soil management, land evaluation and land use planning. A Fertility Capability Classification (FCC) system incorporated with characteristics of soil morphology, soil physics, and soil chemistry were used for this study. Data from 300 soil profiles from rice fields and 28 field experiments on fertilizers efficiency were collected and analyzed, showing that 25 rice soil fertility types were classified in the Mekong delta, in which types of CC (clay in top and subsoil) and CCs (clay in top and subsoil and saline effected) occupied in large areas. The major soil constraints for rice cultivation can be listed as follows: low organic carbon content (o); high P fixation and high Fe toxicity potential (i); potential salinity (s-); low available P (p); high acidity and Al toxicity (a); the separation of actual acid sulfate soils (c, c-) and potential acid sulfate soils (f, f-). 

A study was carried out at the experimental farm in Long Hoa commune, Binh Thuy district, Can Tho city. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of different dietary metabolizable energy (ME) levels of growing Californian rabbits on growth performance and nutrient digestibility.  Sixty Californian rabbits at 45 days of age (500±12.9g) were arranged in a completely randomized design with 5 treatments and 3 replications. Four rabbits including 2 males and 2 females were in one experimental unit. Five treatments were ME levels of 10.0; 10.5; 11.0; 11.5 va 12.0 MJ/kgDM, respectively. The apparent nutrient digestibility and nitrogen retention were done on the rabbits at 12 weeks of age in 7 days. The results of study showed that DM intakes were not significantly different (P

Two experiments were carried out to evaluate the effect of dietary fiber sources from vegetables and fiber supplements. Both experments were 2*3 factorial designs, with 3 replications and. The first factor was vegetable [water spinach (WS), and sweet potato vines (SPV)]; the second one was fiber supplement with Wedelia trilobata (WT), Hymenache acutigluma (HA), or none. Exp 1 was done on 4 male crossbred rabbits at 8 weeks of age in one experimental unit. In Exp 2, nutrient digestibility, nitrogen retention and caecum fermentation were determined in 2 twelve-week old rabbits of experimental unit.In Exp 1, dry matter (DM) and organic intakes were similar (P>0.05) between vegetables and among fiber source supplements. The final weight and weight gain were significantly higher (P 

ABSTRACT:   A total of 60 chicken egg litters of obtained from a local scavenging hens (crossbred Noi) at the first drop (young hens) and later (old hens). Three eggs of each litter were used to determine egg weight, the chemical composition, egg quality and fat components as cholesterol, triglycerides and HDL- cholesterol. The results indicated that egg weight of the first litter was smaller (39.16g) as compared to the later (41.86g), but had proportionately higher in yolk index (0.275 vs 0.234), albumen index (0.074 vs 0.066), Haugh unit (83.2 vs 81.4) and shell ratio (12.7% vs 11.94%). There were not differences in whole egg or yolk or albumen composition (%) between the eggs produced from young and old hens (P>0.05). Except, egg yolk protein content of old hen’s eggs (15.4%) was higher than that of young hens (14.69%). Cholesterol content was lower in eggs of the young (8.0mg/g yolk) as compared to that of old hens (8.94mg/g yolk), in the reverse order for HDL-C (4.70 vs 4.15 mg/g yolk). Triglyceride content in egg of young hens (7,4 mg/g yolk) was higher than that in old ones (4.15 mg/g yolk). This study presented a preliminary database on quality traits, composition and lipid components of the Noi lai chicken keeping in the Mekong delta.

Thermotolerant ethanologenic yeasts have highly attracted many scientists due to the current challenges of increasing global temperature and the benefits associated with processing at high temperature as well as reducing cooling cost. In this study, 50 yeast strains were isolated from 35 different materials of cocoa. Based on characteristics of morphology, physiology and biochemistry, 50 yeast isolates were preliminarily classified into genera as Candida, Hanseniaspora, Kluyveromyces, Pichia, and Saccharomyces. There were 17/50 isolates showing their ethanol tolerant ability up to 12% (v/v) of ethanol and 23/50 isolates could grow at 45oC. The two selected isolates (CT2.5D and PD1.6H) were tested for the ethanol fermentation from molasses (22°Brix) at different temperatures. The results of ethanol concentrations obtained as follow: 7.36% (v/v) at 30oC, 4.15% (v/v) at 40oC, 1.45% (v/v) at 42oC by CT2.5D and 7.4% (v/v) at 30oC, 2.93% (v/v) at 40oC, 1.43% (v/v) at 42oC by PD1.6H. The identification results showed that CT2.5D and PD1.6H were Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

This study investigates the impacts of entrepreneurial characteristics on firm performance, based on a survey of 807 private firms in 2004 and 2009 in Mekong River Delta (MRD) in Vietnam. Controlling for firm characteristics and industry characteristics, this study found that entrepreneurial characteristics are directly related to firm performance. Specifically, the results show that there is partial support for an inverted U-shaped relationship between tenure and firm performance. While entrepreneurs with higher education and higher levels of informal education are strongly associated with higher firm performance, entrepreneur’s risk-averse behaviour has no connection. The study reinforces the importance of entrepreneurs in private firms in the MRD in compared with the earlier empirical evidence and suggests further research in the future.

A great deal of interest in photovoltaics (PV) integration into buildings has been developed by heat insulation solar glass (HISG) due to the advantages claimed of HISG (in terms of energy saving in the cold and hot seasons, enhance power generation and self-cleaning, protection from external noise and wind loads). This study compares energy consumption of heating and of cooling in three houses of normal glass (Ordinary house), Low-E glass (Ordinary solar house) and HISG house. Results show that the energy-saving efficiency of the HISG house has achieved respective 70.68 and 56.09% for cooling; about 23.53 and 10.34% for heating as compared to those of the Ordinary house and Low-E house. The energy consumption for heating and cooling of the HISG house has significantly reduced with energy efficiency ~19.59–37.07% at outdoor temperature above 30oC compared to that of the Ordinary house. The results in this study also offer a low-cost route to the application of HISG modules on buildings with high energy-saving efficiency, it is able to be used for monitoring progression of the greenhouse gas reduction, as well as evaluating their energy efficiency on buildings in the green buildings at the current and future.

Three known natural compounds named n-heptacosan-1-ol (1), bis(2,3-dihydroxypropyl)-tetracosandioate (2) and moracin B (3) were firstly isolated from ethyl acetate extracts of the stem bark of Cassia grandis L.f. Their structures were elucidated by modern spectra including ESI-MS, 1D-NMR, 2D-NMR and by comparison with published data.

Preparing human resources towards intensive integration into the world economy and especially the ASEAN community after 2015 has been a top priority for the Vietnamese government. A comprehensive national project on foreign language improvement has been implemented throughout Vietnam since 2008. Teachers and students' English language proficiency is assessed on the Vietnamese six-level scale of English Language Proficiency (ELP). From 2015, the project focused on enabling non-English majored university students to achieve level 3 (B1) in the Vietnamese six-level scale of ELP. Achieving this aim is at present a big challenge for many universities in Vietnam due to existing EFL policies and teaching practices at these higher education institutes. This paper reports the results of an investigation into teachers’ and students’ perception of EFL policies and practices at a higher education institute in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected by the use of questionnaires and interviews. Results shows that most participants hold a positive perception of the effectiveness of the EFL policies implemented at the researched university and the Vietnamese six-level scale of ELP was not frequently integrated in English teaching. The proposed pedagogical practices were reported to be highly valued by lecturers, but students found them less effective. Data from interviews indicated that to help non-English majored students achieve B1 in English, the researched university should implement the Vietnamese six-level scale of ELP in English teaching curriculum.

Water quality in striped catfish (Pangasianodon hypophthalmus) production systems in the Mekong Delta was investigated to assess the potential impacts of the culture activity on the environment. The study was conducted at three culture systems, so called systems 1, 2 and 3 selected from the catfish culture areas of An Giang, Can Tho and Hau Giang provinces. A total of 21 sites were selected from 10 farms of these three systems for sampling. In system 1, sampling was implemented at inlets, culture ponds and outlets, whereas in system 2 and 3 samples were only obtained from inlets and culture ponds. Sampling was conducted three times throughout the production period including beginning, middle and the end. Main water parameters taken for the assessment consisted of pH, DO, BOD, COD, turbidity, TAN, N-NO2-, N-NO3-, TSS, TN and TP. The results indicated that most of parameters were still in the acceptable ranges except TN and TP. Dissolved oxygen concentrations were constantly above 5 mg/L. The highest concentrations of BOD and COD recorded were 10.7 mg/L and 19.6 mg/L in system 1 and system 3, respectively. Mean concentrations of TSS were relatively low in all systems ranging from 21 to 84 mg/L. However, TN and TP concentrations were considerably high. Concentrations of TN and TP recorded outside the culture ponds were 3 and 10 times higher than the standard levels (3 mg/L and 0.1 mg/L for N and P, respectively). TN concentration varied with the sampling periods but accumulation of TP tended to increase steadily throughout the production period. 

Land tenure security is important to enhance farmers’ incentive in land investment and to agricultural development. The security of farmers’ land rights has been significantly improved in Vietnam since the first Land Law of 1987. However, the improvement has limits. In terms of legal certainty, one of the limits is related to the law on duration of the land rights. At present, farmers can hold their arable land rights for only 50 years, which may affect tenure security and land investment negatively. Although the land rights are subject to renewal, the procedure is problematic. It is, therefore, ideally to allow farmers to hold their arable land rights in perpetuity in order to enlarge the security of their land rights and give them more incentive to have long-term land investment.

Continuing to the chemical study on Hydrocotyle bonariensis Comm. ex Lam. we now focus on the method for extracting alkaloid compound. From the average polarity extract, two isoquinoline alkaloids as tetrahydropalmatine (1), (-)-(S)-xylopinine (2) and a carbohydrate: ethyl 2-O-α-fructofuranoside (3) were isolated and identified. The structures of these new compounds were elucidated based on the data of NMR, ESI–MS spectroscopic techniques and comparison with the reported documents. This was the first report about these compounds on the genus Hydrocotyle. The isolation research has been continued.

Fossil fuels are being depleted at an alarming rate. Alternative fuel sources such as biofuels seem to offer a promising solution to meet the energy demands. This research focuses on; (Phase 1) extracting oils from some biomass sources available in Vietnam, namely, Cashew nut, Castor seed, Makapuno coconut kernel, Calophyllum inophyllum seed, and Terminalia captappa seed, (Phase 2) converting oils to biodiesel using a transesterification process, and (Phase 3) evaluating the properties of resultant biodiesels and blends. Analysis of the physiochemical properties showed that the produced biodiesels can be the potential candidates for the feedstock in biodiesel production in Vietnam as they exhibited fuel properties within the limits prescribed by the latest ASTM, EN and JIS. However, Castor oil biodiesel is unsuitable in pure state for its direct use as fuel in internal combustion engines because its kinematic viscosity at 40oC is extremely high (20.76 mm2/s), exceeding by far the international standard upper limit (5.0 mm2/s). Thus, Castor oil biodiesel was blended with reference diesel at 5%, 10% and 20% on a volume basis (B5, B10, B20), respectively, and the quality was evaluated in terms of kinematic viscosity as well as the density at 18 oC, gross heating value, and copper strip corrosion for 3hrs at 50 oC. The results showed that physicochemical properties of the blends of Castor oil biodiesel and reference diesel were satisfactory according to international standards such as ASTM, EN and JIS.

Wavelet transform is one of the new signal analysis tools, plays an important role in numerous areas like image processing, graphics, data compression, gravitational and geomagnetic data processing, and some others. In this study, we use the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and the multiscale edge detection (MED) with the appropriate wavelet functions to determine the underground targets. The results for this technique from the testing on five theoretical models and experimental data indicate that this is a feasible method for detecting the sizes and positions of the anomaly objects. This GPR analysis can be applied for detecting the natural resources in research shallow structure.

In this paper we consider lexicographic vector equilibrium problems in metric spaces. Sufficient conditions for a family of such problems to be stable in the  sense of upper and lower semicontinuity of the solution sets are established. Moreover, we also derive necessary and/or sufficient conditions for lexicographic vector equilibrium problems to be well-posed  at the reference point. Many examples are provided to ensure the essentialness of the imposed assumptions.

Quantum chemical calculations are employed to examine the interactions of the Au3– cluster in its negatively charged states with several small amino acids. Thermodynamic parameters, electronic structures, bonding characteristics and spectroscopic properties of the resulting complexes are investigated in the framework of density functional theory (M06-2X functional) along with correlation consistent basis sets, namely aug-cc-pVTZ-PP for Au and aug-cc-pVTZ for nonmetals. Computed results show that these interactions are characterized by the nonconventional H-bonds N–H⋯Au and O–H⋯Au. In addition, the forming of the nonconventional H-bonds is likely to accompany with a charge transfer from Au3− to the bimolecular species.

Booming tourism industry recently has contributed significantly to the socio-economic development and structural change of many countries in the world, especially those of emerging economies. However, negative impacts resulted from tourism development of whatever forms – community-based tourism, ecotourism, etc. – should not be neglected. Thus, the tourism forms that can maximize the positive environmental and socio-economic effects while potentially minimizing the negative ones in the destinations where the host communities, tourists, and tourism enterprises interact are strongly encouraged. A tourism model named Professional Volunteering-based Tourism (PVBT) can become one. Based on the 2-week pilot study in rural areas around Cambodia, it can be seen that the PVBT is a highly feasible tourism form, remarkably benefiting the local people. In this paper, the author firstly describes what such a model is, followed by its organization and operation. The paper then examines the role that PVBT can play in community development, particularly in reducing the development gap between rural dwellers and citizens, with a set of convincing evidences observed and collected in the two provinces in Cambodia where the pilot studies had been carried out in Kampong Speu and Kandal Provinces (Cambodia) in August and September 2013 respectively.

One of the earliest cultures in the Christian era, which is formed from the first to the sixth centuries in Southern Vietnam, is Oc Eo culture. The archeologist findings and historical records helped to discover main traits of Oc Eo culture, and how the culture was emerged and developed. This writing would try to touch upon these issues by combining different documents to reappear the overview picture of Oc Eo culture in Southern Vietnam. This paper, furthermore, would make clear the distribution, characteristics of Oc Eo artifacts, and discovery the life of Oc Eo inhabitants at that time.  

Community-based seed production and supply program in An Giang province had started since 2001, during 14 years (2001-2014) of implementation, about 15,115 farmers were trained and practiced in seed production, and 187 seed production clubs were established with the participation of 5,464 farmers and 29 seed production enterprises. The area for multiplying seed had increased year by year: 2,200 ha (2004), 12,659 ha (2008), 14,090 ha (2010) and 25,544 ha in 2014; corresponding to the increase of certified seed production from 9,700 tons (in 2004) to 66,568 tons (2010) and 169,321 tons (2014), has met the seed demand for the province's production from 30% (2004) to 90% (from 2008 to 2014). Due to the market demand and competition, from the 2011, communities’ seed quality had faced more competition and seed quality testing was required and concerned. Until 2014, 11,192 tons of certified seed met seed quality standard - QCVN: 01-54 (National Regulation on Seed Quality), this contributed greatly to the increasing of province's yield from 5.74 t/ha (2004) to 6.46 t/ha (2014). In addition, nearly 50 promising rice lines selected by farmers were released for adaptive tests and use. The community-based seed production program through “seed club” has brought significantly economic and practical efficiency by seed security for rice production in An Giang province.