Plasticity or evolution in behavioural responses are key attributes of successful animal invasions. In northern Australia, the invasive cane toad (Rhinella marina) recently invaded semi-arid regions. Here, cane toads endure repeated daily bouts of severe desiccation and thermal stress during the long dry season (April-October). We investigated whether cane toads have shifted their ancestral noc...

The genotype and environment interaction influences the selection criteria of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) genotypes. Eight sweet sorghum genotypes were evaluated at five different locations in two growing seasons of 2014. The aim was to determine the interaction between genotype and environment on cane, juice, and ethanol yield and to identify best genotypes for bioethanol production in Kenya. Th...

The management of cane supply from growers’ fields to the mill involves many stakeholders and many tasks to be carried out along the chain, the successful combination of which impacts on the efficiency and profitability of the mill area. A simulation tool called MAGI has been developed to assist millers and growers in designing and assessing new ways of organising supply management. The issues ...

EVERY sugarcane grower would like the best levels of performance for all traits, such as high cane yield, high sugar content, resistance or tolerance to biotic and abiotic stress, and every other desirable attribute, all combined together into the same variety. In the real world, however, almost all the important crop traits vary continuously and mostly independently, in genetic populations gen...

The transporting sugarcane from cane fields to a mill factory is a potential cost in sugarcane logistics. The poorly operating vehicle (six-wheel truck) services and transportation lot size results in lost or excess of cane supplied. In this paper, we consider the integrated districting problem of whole cane field region and transportation lot size of each cane field. We formulate the combining...

The cane toad invasion in Australia provides a robust opportunity to clarify the infection process in co-evolved versus de novo host-parasite interactions. We investigated these infection dynamics through histological examination following experimental infections of metamorphs of native frogs (Cyclorana australis) and cane toads (Rhinella marina) with Rhabdias hylae (the lungworm found in nativ...

The introduced cane toad (Bufo marinus) poses a major threat to biodiversity due to its lifelong toxicity. Several terrestrial native Australian vertebrates are adapting to the cane toad's presence and lab trials have demonstrated that repeated exposure to B. marinus can result in learnt avoidance behaviour. Here we investigated whether aversion learning is occurring in aquatic ecosystems by co...

The South African sugar industry has recently moved from a cane payment scheme based on the sucrose content of cane to one based upon the concept of recoverable value (RV), which is itself a modification of the estimated recoverable crystal (ERC) quantity as originally presented by van Hengel (1974). While the definitions of ERC and RV attempt to discount the effect of cane quality on factory p...

The Cane Corso Italiano belongs among the new dog breeds that were fully recognised by Federation Cynologique Internationale (FCI) in 2007. For the first time, this study describes a median lifespan using the data of 232 dogs of the Cane Corso Italiano breed collected from kennels and individual owners from 25 countries. The median lifespan of the whole examined group is 9.29 years (IQR 6.98-11...

Results are reported of six plant and three ratoon crop experiments in which the practice of applying a clear polyethylene film (PE film) to sugarcane was evaluated. A yield response to PE film was obtained in three out of the six plant crop experiments but there was no response to a PE film applied to ratoon cane. In five plant cane and in one ratoon cane experiment, substantial improvements i...