1. Neonate evergreen bagworms, Thyridopteryx ephemeraeformis (Haworth) (Lepidoptera: Psychidae), disperse by dropping on a strand of silk, termed silking, and ballooning on the wind. Larvae construct silken bags with fragments of plant foliage. This species is highly polyphagous, feeding on more than 125 species of woody plants of 45 families. The larvae commonly infests juniper (Juniperus spp....

Aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases are the key enzymes for protein synthesis. Glycine, alanine, serine and tyrosine are the major amino acids composing fibroin of silkworm. Among them, the genes of alanyl-tRNA synthetase (AlaRS) and glycyl-tRNA synthetase (GlyRS) have been cloned. In this study, the seryl-tRNA synthetase (SerRS) and tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase (TyrRS) genes from silkworm were cloned. Their...

Corn silage is a major ingredient of diets for dairy cattle. Environmental factors can affect the yield and composition of corn silage. Drought and heat are two common environmental factors that affect silage yield and quality. Corn silages with low concentrations of dry matter, high concentrations of protein, high concentrations of fiber, and low concentrations of starch indicate that the crop...

Corn growth conditions and yield are closely dependent on climate variability. Leaf growth, measured as the leaf area index, can be used to identify changes in crop growth in response to climate stress. This research was conducted to capture patterns of spatial and temporal corn leaf growth under climate stress for the St. Joseph River watershed, in northeastern Indiana. Leaf growth is represen...

In maize (Zea mays), leaf senescence acts as a nutrient recycling process involved in proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids degradation and transport to the developing sink. However, the molecular mechanisms of pre-maturation associated with pollination-prevention remain unclear in maize. To explore global gene expression changes during the onset and progression of senescence in maize, the inbred...

Aflatoxin contamination resulting from maize infection by Aspergillus flavus is both an economic and a public health concern. Therefore, strategies for controlling aflatoxin contamination in maize are being investigated. The abilities of eleven naturally occurring atoxigenic isolates in Nigeria to reduce aflatoxin contamination in maize were evaluated in grain competition experiments and in fie...

During maize development and reproduction, shading stress is an important abiotic factor influencing grain yield. To elucidate the genetic basis of shading stress in maize, an F(2:3) population derived from two inbred lines, Zhong72 and 502, was used to evaluate the performance of six traits under shading treatment and full-light treatment at two locations. The results showed that shading treat...

Helicoverpa zea Boddie (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), the corn earworm, is a key pest of sweet corn (Poales: Poaceae) in many parts of the United States. Integrated pest management (IPM) practices for H. zea in fresh and processing sweet corn use pheromone trap counts of male moths for management decisions. In this study, we examined whether sweet corn could be protected more effectively if insectic...

Increasing plant density is one of the main approaches of achieving higher yields for modern maize crop. However, there exists leaf redundancy for high-density maize, and leaves of the upper canopy shade more competent leaves at the middle strata. In a two-year field experiments, Jinhai5, a semi-compact corn cultivar, was grown at a density of 105,000 plants ha-1 grown until 3 days after silkin...

Striacosta albicosta (Smith) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), is a native pest of dry beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) and corn (Zea mays L.). As a result of larval feeding damage on corn ears, S. albicosta has a narrow treatment window; thus, early detection of the pest in the field is essential, and egg mass sampling has become a popular monitoring tool. Three action thresholds for field and sweet corn...