Biological control of aphids can be achieved with parasitoids. A parasitoid is a wasp able to parasitize aphids in a host-specific way. These natural enemies of aphids are used in organic or integrated pest management strategies. In order to apply the matching parasitoid against a given aphid species, the aphid has to be detected in the crop and subsequently identified. By the time the aphids a...

The leaf nitrogen content is generally accepted as an indicator of food quality and as a factor affecting host selection by phytophagous insects. The alate pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum Harris, Aphididae) were given a choice among non-nodulated pea plants (Pisum sativum L.) supplied with one of four nitrate-N levels (0, 3, 15 and 30 mM). When whole plants were exposed to aphids for 7 days, th...

Alfalfa is the most productive and highest quality forage species. Over one million acres of alfalfa have been harvested each year in Montana since 1960. Yield and forage quality of alfalfa vary widely across environments and operations. Currently there is much interest in targeting specialized hay markets. Most Montana producers can consistently produce alfalfa that is of fair to good quality....

Twenty Naieni breed replacement ewe lambs were used to determine the substitution effects of treated wheat straw with exogenous fiber-degrading enzymes for alfalfa hay on wool characteristics. Five treatment diets were included: 1) control (100% alfalfa hay without wheat straw), 2) 10% enzyme treated wheat straw replaced for alfalfa hay, 3) 20% enzyme treated wheat straw replaced for alfalfa ha...

Unlike most crops which have moved east-west, alfalfa gained its fIrst important foothold in North America in the valleys and deserts of California in the 18505 after the Gold Rush. Alfalfa played a crucial role in the agriculture of California before the development of the high value fI11it and vegetable crops which now are widely associated with the state's agriculture. Although alfalfa acrea...

The study was conducted in the northern Texas Rolling Plains in 1999 to define the relationship between number of cotton aphids, Aphis gossypii Glover, and resulting contamination of cotton lint by honeydew. Whole-plot treatments were three furrow irrigation management treatments: cotton grown without supplemental irrigation (dryland), irrigated cotton with last irrigation in mid August, and ir...

Aphids are economically important pests that cause extensive feeding damage and transmit viruses. While some species have a broad host range and cause damage to a variety of crops, others are restricted to only closely related plant species. While probing and feeding aphids secrete saliva, containing effectors, into their hosts to manipulate host cell processes and promote infestation. Aphid ef...

Host specialization is a ubiquitous character of phytophagous insects. The polyphagous population is usually composed of some subpopulations that can use only a few closely related plants. Cotton-melon aphids, Aphis gossypii Glover exhibited strong host specialization, and the cotton- and cucurbits-specialized biotypes had been clearly identified. However, the experimental work that addressed t...

In 1986, it was shown that tobacco plants and sunflower calluses could express recombinant human growth hormone as a fusion protein [1]. Since then, a diverse range of plant systems has been used for the production of pharmaceuticals [2, 3]. We have developed a production system based on the leaves of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.), a choice made originally because of the plant’s many favorable a...

BACKGROUND Alfalfa is the most widely cultivated forage legume and one of the most economically valuable crops in the world. The large size and complexity of the alfalfa genome has delayed the development of genomic resources for alfalfa research. Second-generation Illumina transcriptome sequencing is an efficient method for generating a global transcriptome sequence dataset for gene discovery ...