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During the 1990s the cooperative dairy processing sector in India was exposed to greater competition from private sector plants. In this paper we measure cost e¤ciency (decomposed into technical and allocative e¤ciency) at the dairy plant level in the cooperative and private sectors in India. Two e¤ciency measurement methods are used: stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and data envelopment analysis (DEA). The study utilizes an (incomplete) panel data sample of 23 plants, comprising 13 cooperative plants and 10 private plants, observed between 1992/93 and 1996/97. Our results indicate that cooperative plants are more cost e¤cient than private plants, although this di¡erence is insigni¢cant at the 5 per cent level. Furthermore, we observe that the cost e¤ciency of cooperative plants has not improved since market liberalization in 1991. These results suggest that the liberalization policy has not yet realized its expected bene¢ts, and also cause us to question the general expectation that private operators will have e¤ciency advantages relative to cooperatives. &CIRIEC 2001. Published by Blackwell Publishers,

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The killer phenomenon of yeast may have technological implications in many areas like beverage fermentation, food technology, biological control in agriculture, and in medicine. In the present study the killer phenomenon in Pichia kudriavzevii (P. kudriavzevii RY55) is being reported for the first time. The P. kudriavzevii RY55 toxin exhibited excellent antibacterial activity against several pathogens of human health significance such as Escherichia coli, Enterococcus faecalis, Klebsiella sp., Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Pseudomonas alcaligenes. Killer toxin was purified to homogeneity by using ammonium sulphate precipitation and ion exchange chromatography and characterized for few properties. P. kudriavzevii RY55 killer toxin may be of vast significance in the development of novel antimicrobial chemotherapeutic agents, new bio-based safer candidates for food preservation and biocontrol, and starter cultures for fermentation industries.