Scope for non-crop plants to promote conservation biological control of crop pests and serve as sources of botanical insecticides

Effect of non-crop vegetation types on conservation biological control of pests in olive groves

Conservation biological control (CBC) is an environmentally sound potential alternative to the use of chemical insecticides. It involves modifications of the environment to promote natural enemy activity on pests. Despite many CBC studies increasing abundance of natural enemies, there are far fewer demonstrations of reduced pest density and very little work has been conducted in olive crops. In...

Biotechnological Approaches for the Control of Insect Pests in Crop Plants

Each year billions of dollars are spent worldwide on insect control in agriculture [1]. Despite this expenditure, up to 40% of a crop can be lost to insect damage, particularly in developing countries [2]. Some of the most damaging insect species belong to the Lepidoptera, the second largest insect order comprised of moths and butterflies. The larval stage of moths cause major damage to an arra...

Evaluating the efficacy of entomopathogenic nematodes for the biological control of crop pests: a nonequilibrium approach.

The efficacy of entomopathogenic nematodes for biological control is assessed using deterministic models. Typically, the examination of such models involves stability analyses to determine the long-term persistence of control. However, in agricultural systems, control is often needed within a single season. Hence, the transient dynamics of the systems were assessed under specific, short-term co...

Non Crop Sources of Cmv and Implications for Management

Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) is a tripartite, positive-sense RNA plant virus in the genus Cucumovirus, family Bromoviridae. This virus is one of the most economically important viruses affecting several crop plant species and it has one of the widest host ranges among the characterized viruses. Recently, snap bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) and pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) crops in Wisconsin have ex...

Biofortification of Crop Plants