Morphological and Physiological Parameters of Soybean Resistance to Insect Pests

Genetic engineering of rice for resistance to homopteran insect pests

The rice brown planthopper (BPH; Nilaparvata lugens) is a serious pest of rice crops throughout Asia, damaging plants both through its feeding behavior and by acting as a virus vector. Like many homopteran pests of crops, it is primarily a phloem feeder, abstracting sap via specially adapted mouthparts. An artificial diet bioassay system for this pest was developed to allow the effects of poten...

Alternatives to Chemical Control of Insect Pests

In 2011, practitioners and advocates of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) find themselves addressing agricultural, societal, and political pressures worldwide resulting from human population growth. This growth brings simultaneous burdens of sustaining a steady food supply; these include preventing losses from pests, dealing with increased human global travel, which in turn intensifies opportuni...

Physiological and molecular approaches to improve drought resistance in soybean.

Drought stress is a major constraint to the production and yield stability of soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.]. For developing high yielding varieties under drought conditions, the most widely employed criterion has traditionally been direct selection for yield stability over multiple locations. However, this approach is time consuming and labor intensive, because yield is a highly quantitative...

Organically Grown Soybean Production in the USA: Constraints and Management of Pathogens and Insect Pests

Soybean is the most produced and consumed oil seed crop worldwide. In 2013, 226 million metric tons were produced in over 70 countries. Organically produced soybean represents less than 0.1% of total world production. In the USA, the certified organic soybean crop was grown on 53 thousand ha or 0.17% of the total soybean acreage in the USA (32 million ha) in 2011. A gradual increase in producti...

Developing Host-Plant Resistance for Hemipteran Soybean Pests: Lessons from Soybean Aphid and Stink Bugs