The Faculty of Fisheries of the University of Agriculture and Forestry (FoF-UAF) in collaboration with the Aqua Outreach programme of the Asian Institute of Technology has implemented since 1994 farmer-managed on-farm trials in two different agroecological (rainfed and irrigated) areas of four provinces (Tay Ninh, Binh Duong, Binh Phuoc and Long An) to develop fish culture in ponds of small-scale households in the southeast region of southern Vietnam. Baseline surveys carried out prior to the trials have pointed out problems of fish culture of farmers in the two selected areas, e.g. pond preparation, cultured fish selection, stocking density, and water quality management. After 3 years implementation of the on-farm trials, appropriate recommendations of low-cost fish culture for small-scale farmers in the two agroecological areas have been produced. The average fish yield of 56 project farms in three provinces (Tay Ninh, Binh Phuoc and Long An), has increased around 40, 25 and 70%, respectively. Since 1996 the project staff have collaborated with Agricultural Extension Centres (AECs) of the three provinces to train about 700 farmers on fish culture based on the proven recommendations. Moreover, three sets of leaflets on fish culture in ponds for different agroecological areas based on appropriate techniques have also been designed to support extension activities of the provincial AECs. To improve the efficiency of the AECs on aquacultural technique transfer, the FoF-UAF has organized several short training courses to upgrade knowledge and skills for AEC staff. In 1996, 64 extension staff of the three provinces were trained on integrated fish culture and extension methods and 41 extension workers have been trained on methods of fish culture on-farm trials and extension material production to date. The fish culture on-farm trials have been shown to be an efficient method to produce appropriate recommendations for small-scale farmers. However, some difficulties in implementation of the trials need to be overcome for further expansion.

This paper focuses on examining the key factors that affect poor households in the Central Highlands by using the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) methods to analyze the Vietnam Living Standard Survey (VLSS) in 2008 panel dataset. In the 597 surveyed households in the Central Highlands, we selected 95 poor households to make research group. The empirical findings indicate that income per capita of poor households has been affected by many factors in which the strongest impact is from education level, size of households and marital status. Furthermore, the empirical study shows that most poor households in this research are ethnic minorities with large scale, low level of education and occupational skills.

This paper aims to clarify the impact of the credit for the expenditure of poor households in Vietnam. We have used Difference in Difference (DID) methods to estimate the panel data from Vietnam Living Standard Survey (VLSS) for the period of 2010-2012. The results showed that the credit has a positive influence to the average expenditure of the poor households, whether in formal credit or informal credit. However, informal credit is still a very important source of credit for poor households in Vietnam because it increases expenditure of poor households higher than formal credit. In addition, research also found significant effects of some factors such as regional, ethnicity, education level, household size to expenditures. JEL Classifications: C33, H81, P36, H31

Glutamine synthetase (GS, CE 6.3.1.2) is an enzyme that catalyzes the ATP-dependent condensation of glutamic acid with ammonia to yield glutamine. Glutamine synthetase is a key enzyme involved in the assimilation of inorganic nitrogen into organic forms. In plant cells, GS is present in both chloroplasts (GS2) and cytoplasm (GS1), in which GS1 can assimilate nitrogen source. In this study, one transgenic vector pBI121 carrying GS1 gene under the control of promoter 35S (pBI121::GS1) were successfully constructed. This vector containing G1S gene was transformed into tobacco leaves pieces via Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain C58. Five weeks after cultivation, there were 28 tobacco lines which had roots on the medium added kanamycin 50 mg/l. Then, the presence of G1S gene in these tobacco lines was tested from leaves in the next experiments. PCR and Southern blot confirmed that there are five tobacco lines carrying transferred GS1 gene. The effectiveness of nitrogen using in GS1 transgenic tobacco plants in vitro was evaluated. The tissue fresh weight, number and height of shoots forming buds and rooting ability of GS1 transgenic tobacco plants were greater than those of non-GM plants in the medium of low nitrogen concentration (0.1X - 0.2X). Assessment of crop growing in a greenhouse demonstrated that GS1 transgenic tobacco plants grow faster than non-transgenic ones. In detail, the increment of plant height after planting 03 months and 05 months in greenhouse is 43.55% and 33.29%, respectively. These results provide a scientific basis for the development of other genetically modified plants which enhanced nitrogen-use efficiency.