Like many states in the European Union, Ireland has yet to fully commit itself to genetically modified (GM) crop technology. The general position of the Irish Government is ‘positive but precautionary’. However, with the European-wide de-facto moratorium on commercial production of GM crops now ended, many strategically important decisions regarding the commercial deployment of such crops and t...

This study with three Appalachian county agricultural education programs examined the feasibility, effectiveness, and impact of integrating a cost-effective rollover protective structure (CROPS) project into high school agricultural mechanics classes. The project aimed to (1) reduce the exposure to tractor overturn hazards in three rural counties through the installation of CROPS on seven tract...

Crop rotation is an effective tactic for soybean cyst nematode (SCN) management. In the North Central region of the USA, corn is almost exclusively used as a nonhost rotation crop with soybean. This study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of crops common to or having potential use in the North Central region as rotation crops for managing SCN. Sixteen potential rotation crops and SCN...

In this paper we assess the benefits and costs of introducing biologically contained genetically modified (GM) crops, with an application to the potential introduction of GM tomatoes and eggplants in Italy and Spain. Such crops possess both the standard beneficial GM traits, and they prevent introgression of transgenes from GM crops to their conventional or wild relatives, thereby adding to the...

Cover crops can harbor both harmful and beneficial arthropods (1, 3). Damage to cover crops themselves is rarely of concern; more important is the possibility that pests harbored amid cover crops may disperse to adjoining cash crops [see Kennedy and Margolies (31) for a discussion of the dynamics of such mobile pests]. Here, I explore the roles that cover crops play in the life cycles and popul...

A simple and convenient liquid chromatographic method has been developed and applied to the analysis of the novel aminothiazolecarboxamide fungicide, ethaboxam, in soil and crops. After the isolation and concentration of analyte from soil and crops, clean-up and separation of sample solutions are performed by high-performance liquid chromatography with online solid-phase extraction. Good linear...

BACKGROUND Honey bees (Apis mellifera L.) are the most important pollinators of many agricultural crops worldwide and are a key test species used in the tiered safety assessment of genetically engineered insect-resistant crops. There is concern that widespread planting of these transgenic crops could harm honey bee populations. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We conducted a meta-analysis of 25...

The past 10 years have seen the discovery of unexpected levels of conservation of gene content and gene orders over millions of years of evolution within grasses, crucifers, legumes, some trees, and Solanaceae crops. Within the grasses, which include the three 500-million-ton-plus-per-year crops (wheat, maize, and rice), and the crucifers, which include all the Brassica crops, colinearity looks...

European Union Commissioner for the Environment Stavros Dimas recently hailed 'upgraded' non-genetically modified (GM) crops as an alternative to GM crops. A comparative analysis of the environmental risks associated with such non-GM herbicide-resistant crops and GM herbicide-resistant crops is presented here. The analysis highlights serious weaknesses in the European Union (EU) regulatory fram...