• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.538-547
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• 2023

Rapid apple decline (RAD) is a complex phenomenon affecting cultivated apple trees and particularly dwarf rootstocks on grafted young apple trees. Since its first appearance in the United States, RAD has been reported worldwide, for example in Canada, South America, Africa, and Asia. The phenomenon has also been observed in apple orchards in Korea, and it presented similar symptoms regardless of apple cultivar and cultivation period. Most previous reports have suggested that RAD may be associated with multiple factors, including plant pathogenic infections, abiotic stresses, environmental conditions, and the susceptibility of trees to cold injury during winter. However, RAD was observed to be more severe and affect more frequently apple trees on the Malling series dwarf rootstock. In this study, we reviewed the current status of RAD worldwide and surveyed biotic and abiotic factors that are potentially closely related to it in Korea.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.403-409
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• 2022

In biological particles such as Fusarium species, ice nucleation activity (INA) has been observed. Fusarium strains isolated from apple declined trees in Korea were identified with a multilocus sequence analysis using the tef1 and rpb1 genes. Droplet-freezing and tube-freezing assays were used to determine the INA of the strains, using Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae KACC 21200 as a positive control and resulting in seven INA+ fungal strains that were identified as F. tricinctum (KNUF-21-F17, KNUF-21-F18, KNUF-21-F29, KNUF-21-F32, KNUF-21-F38, KNUF-21-F43, and KNUF-21-F44). The effect of Fusarium INA+ KNUF-21-F29 was compared to that of INA- strains on Chrysanthemum morifolium cv. Shinma explants. A higher callus formation and no-shoot formation were observed, suggesting that fungal INA could play a role in cold injuries and be a factor to consider in rapid apple decline. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of INA fungal strains isolated in Korea.

• Information Systems Review
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.41-54
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• 2022

Despite the recent rapid advancement of science and technology, we have been experiencing the decline in productivity since the 2000s. This study aims to investigate the decline at both industry and firm levels, by looking at the emergence and growth of large firms such as Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple and M&A trends. Following the results of previous studies, our results show that productivity at industry level has decreased since the 2000s. Particularly, in the period after 2011, the deterioration of allocative efficiency due to the large firms and the decline in the growth rate of surviving firms in the industry with low ratio of large firms contributed to the productivity decline. On the other hand, our analysis at firm level demonstrates that the productivity of firms that acquired IT firms improved over the entire period. While M&As have a positive impact on productivity, M&As with a demand-side motive such as market penetration and expansion of channels have a relatively larger impact than the ones for production or operation efficiency. Our results also suggest that the higher the proportion of large firms in a specific industry, the lower the productivity of individual firms in the same industry. Overall, given that the industry's structural changes for digital transformation tends to strengthen the growth of large firms, our findings have significant implications by empirically identifying the relationships of the emergence of large firms, the acquisition of IT/Non-IT firms, and motivations for M&As to firm/industry productivity.