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Agent banking is working as the strongest medium of financial inclusion in Bangladesh now a days. The unbanked population of the rural areas are getting the opportunity of having financial transactions through agent at their convenient place and people and banks. The aim of this paper is to bring in light the updated scenario of agent banking operation in Bangladesh for the last five years from September 2018 to September 2022. The paper focused the year wise financial inclusion rate and growth of the rural, unbanked, and lowly community of Bangladesh through the point of view from agent banking. The study used the agent banking consolidated report from published secondary data from the Bangladesh Bank’s financial inclusion wing to perform the five years comparative analysis. The study used total population sampling obtained from purposive sampling technique and the analysis is done on growth rate calculation and five years trend by MS Excel. The analysis is a summary of all the thirty-one scheduled commercial banks data who are currently practicing agent banking services according to the guideline of Bangladesh bank.

To pursue higher studies students are engaging with private universities in modern times as the acceptance rate of public universities in Bangladesh is low. Students are acquiesced for private universities by some influencing factors while taking enrollment decision. After extracting the knowledge of previous literatures, the study developed a conceptual framework of enrollment decision factors that can influence students’ choice selecting private universities in Bangladesh. The four broad choice factors of the study were: Decision Influencers (DI), E-learning Indicators (ELI), Economic Factors (EF), and Career Prospect (CP) under which 19 variables were developed that were assumed to have a positive relationship with students’ enrollment decision in the private universities. The students of Varendra University, Rajshahi, Bangladesh from different departments participated in an online structured survey questionnaire and enrolled themselves in private universities during the COVID pandemic in between 2020 to 2021. The study developed a structured online questionnaire and circulated the questionnaire to 360 students and received 352completed questionnaire with a response rate of 97.8%. The study performed a non-probability convenient sampling method during the year 2021 and analyzed in MS Excel to find the percent and cumulative percent of the decision variables. The result of study indicated that as a private university, Varendra University meets most of the academic, career, and faculty credential attributes and market rations that attract more students to study in private universities and besides this universities can expand more visibility for the students if their promotional efforts are amplified in a wider scope.

International Potato Center (CIP), -bred potato genotypes produce various yields under heat stress conditions due to being sown late. To explore options for achieving this, a replicated experiment was conducted at the field of Tuber Crops Research Sub-Centre, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Bogura, Bangladesh to evaluate the performance of fourteen CIP-bred potato genotypes with two controls (Asterix and Granola). The experiment was laid out in a split-plot design with three replications. Several indices were applied to find out the suitable genotypes under heat stress. The plant height increased by 34.61% under heat stress, which was common in all the potato genotypes. Similarly, other yield-participating characters like stem per hill, canopy coverage (%), plant vigor, and tuber number per plant were also increased under heat stress conditions. However, the tuber yield was decreased by 6.30% and 11.41%, respectively when harvested at 70 and 90 days after plantation. Moreover, “CIP-203” yielded the highest (40.66 t ha-1) in non-stressed whereas, “CIP-118” yielded the highest (32.89 t/ha) in stressed conditions. Likewise, the bred “CIP-218” and “CIP-118” performed better under both growing conditions and yielded &gt, 35.00 t ha-1. According to a rank-sum test, among the fourteen potato genotypes, “CIP-218”, “LB-7”, “CIP-118”, “CIP-232”, and “CIP-112” were selected as heat-tolerant potatoes and can grow in both growing conditions with higher yield potential.

Bangladesh is one of the climate change endangered countries in the world, having numerous disasters around the year due to its geographical location, low lying landscape, and a high amount of carbon emission. To overcome the adverse climate change impact, Bangladesh bank has directed all the banks sincerely and thoughtfully to adopt green banking practices for the betterment of the country. In particular, Green banking aims to choose environment-friendly banking practices for all banks and sustainable financing for its clients. The ground of the paper is to encourage green banking practice and explore its potentials in commercial banks where Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd. (IBBL) is considered as an instance. The analysis of the paper is based on secondary data sources. In the data collection process, the last five consecutive years' published data of IBBL's green banking disclosure were taken into account. The study's objective is to measure how effectively IBBL is performing its green banking obligation by analyzing and comparing each year's value to the subsequent year. For the data analysis, the author has used MS Excel and a simple growth rate model. The study found a positive growth rate in direct green investment and CRF utilization of IBBL. However, the growth of the green marketing, awareness program and the bank's utility consumption appeared with a negative growth rate. The study also resulted in IBBL's inconsistent growth in waste management and renewable energy management. The overall performance of the green banking practice of IBBL for 2014 to 2018 was good. Therefore, it is expected that the banks will focus more on green banking issues to attain socially responsible banking to reduce environmental degradation. &nbsp

The experiment was carried out at Agronomy Research field of Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Joydebpur, Gazipur and Regional Agricultural Research Station, Hathazari, Chittagong to find out optimum sowing date of sunflower during rabi season 2012-13. The sunflower var. BARI Surjomukhi-2 was used. Five sowing dates; 10 November, 20 November, 30 November, 10 December and 20 December were tested. It was revealed that yield and yield attributes of sunflower were significantly influenced by sowing dates. The maximum plant height (172.13 cm), head diameter (18.33), weight of seed / per head (66 g), 1000- seed weight (68 g) and yield (2.5 t ha?1) were obtained from 20 November sowing. The lowest yield (1.83 t ha?1) was obtained from 20 December sowing. The 20 November sowing received the higher duration for maturity (127 days), first flowering (57 days) and seed formation (20 days) while 20 December sowing showed shorter duration for maturity, first flowering and seed formation of 119, 54 and 14 days respectively. It was concluded that the 20 November sowing would be the optimum time of sowing for achieving maximum yield of sunflower.Bangladesh Agron. J. 2015, 18(1): 1-5