Oilseed rape is used as both food and a renewable energy resource. Physiological parameters, such as the amino acid aspartic acid, can indicate the growth status of oilseed rape. Traditional detection methods are laborious, time consuming, costly, and not usable in the field. Here, we investigate near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) as a fast and non-destructive detection method of aspartic acid i...

To study the effect of plant species on the abundance and diversity of bacterial antagonists, the abundance, the phenotypic diversity, and the genotypic diversity of rhizobacteria isolated from potato, oilseed rape, and strawberry and from bulk soil which showed antagonistic activity towards the soilborne pathogen Verticillium dahliae Kleb. were analyzed. Rhizosphere and soil samples were taken...

Predicting outcomes of transgene flow from arable crops requires a system perspective that considers ecological and evolutionary processes within a landscape context. In Europe, the arable weed Raphanus raphanistrum is a potential hybridization partner of oilseed rape, and the two species are ecologically linked through the common herbivores Meligethes spp. Observations in Switzerland show that...

Monitoring studies at the landscape level are complex, expensive and difficult to conduct. Many aspects have to be considered to avoid confounding effects which is probably the reason why they are not regularly performed in the context of risk assessments of plant protection products to pollinating insects. However, if conducted appropriately their contribution is most valuable. In this paper w...

Effects of climate change on productivity of agricultural crops in relation to diseases that attack them are difficult to predict because they are complex and nonlinear. To investigate these crop-disease-climate interactions, UKCIP02 scenarios predicting UK temperature and rainfall under high- and low-CO(2) emission scenarios for the 2020s and 2050s were combined with a crop-simulation model pr...

One of the problems facing the introduction of novel crops is the concerns about their spread into the natural environment. A long-term study of oilseed rape (canola) growing on the verges of one of Britain’s busiest motorways provides some encouragement that at least some crops find the going tough outside the field environment in which they are sown. Michael Crawley at Imperial College London...

Oilseed rape (Brassica napus) is one of the major oilseed crops in the world but is vulnerable to attack by many pathogens and insect pests. In addition to the host plant genotype, micro-organisms present in the rhizosphere and within plant tissues affect the susceptibility to plant pathogens. While rapid progress has been achieved concerning the concept of plant resistance genes, information o...

from the last few years, the inclusion of microbial phytase in poultry diets has increased significantly, mainly in response to heightened concerns over phosphorus pollution of the environment and as cheaper means to make phosphorus available to birds from phytate. phytate is the major form of phosphorus, abundantly found in cereal grains, beans and oilseed meals used in poultry diet but the mo...