• Food Engineering Progress
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.312-321
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• 2019

The Lao PDR is a developing country that heavily relies on rice farming. During off-season of rice farming, rural villagers produce non-timber forest products such as bamboo products. Until recently many villages have overexploited bamboo resources and supplied raw bamboo materials to foreign companies. Although the Lao government allocated harvesting quotas, most villagers keep on cutting bamboos due to no other income during the off-season. This study provides an alternative income model, bamboo handicraft, that can increase villagers' income while minimizing the use of bamboo resources. It also accesses the economic feasibility of the new income model for a mountain village, Nongboua village, where surveys were conducted on general incomes of 10 sample families who participated in the new income model voluntarily. A difference was made during the off-season when the sample families worked on cutting bamboos (previous income) or bamboo handicrafts (new income). A daily wage of $ 11.5 was used for the previous income, based on our surveys. For the new income, it was assumed that single family could produce 6 bamboo handicrafts daily with a unit price of $ 2.3, resulting in a daily income of $ 13.8. During the off-season, 8 and 14 working days in a month were assumed for the previous and new incomes based on surveys. Then the previous previous and new yearly incomes were estimated and compared using normality and paired t-tests. This study found that the new yearly income was significantly greater than the previous yearly income (p < 0.001): the former (rice farming and bamboo handicraft, $ 2,064) was 42% ($ 608) greater than the latter (rice farming and bamboo cutting, $ 1,456). These results suggested that the new income model could increase villagers' income significantly. If the bamboo handicraft model is applied for other areas with bamboo resources, it can provide an opportunity to improve the rural economies and livelihoods of developing countries.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2024

Betung bamboo (Dendrocalamus asper) is used as a building and handicraft material in Indonesia; however, bamboo needs to be dried to increase its stability. This study aimed to evaluate the efficiency of drying bamboo using solar energy and different drying oven designs. The betung bamboo pieces were dried using a direct solar dryer (direct drying) and an indirect solar dryer (indirect drying) and then the decrease in levels that occurred based on the relative humidity (RH) and temperature values achieved in the two dryers were compared. The highest average temperature in the direct indirect drying oven compartment was 60.1 ± 13.1℃ with 19.9 ± 16.4% RH and 60.2 ± 11.9℃ with 19.5 ± 15.5% RH, respectively. The drying defect in indirect drying was lower than that in direct drying, and indirect drying had a 61.7% greater average water loss than direct drying with significant difference (95%, analysis of variance) based on water loss/compartment volume parameters. Thus, the solar drying oven can be used to air-dry bamboo (14%) for 7 d from an initial moisture content of 70%-80% in bamboo strips. The results of this research can be used for small-scale bamboo processing industries that have limited use of electrical energy with quite good results.