A fundamental shift to a total system approach for crop protection is urgently needed to resolve escalating economic and environmental consequences of combating agricultural pests. Pest management strategies have long been dominated by quests for "silver bullet" products to control pest outbreaks. However, managing undesired variables in ecosystems is similar to that for other systems, includin...

Using the yeast two-hybrid system, complementary DNA clones were isolated from a HeLa cell library encoding proteins that interacted with p52shc. One of these clones encoded the non-catalytic, COOH-terminal half of the cytosolic protein tyrosine phosphatase PTP-PEST. Expression of truncated forms of p52shc in the two-hybrid system revealed that the amino-terminal half of p52shc was sufficient f...

A formal citrus insect pest survey was conducted in two citrus growing districts of Kenya, Bungoma and Machakos, to determine important insect pests of citrus and evaluate the pest control practices used by small-scale farmers. Observations were made on the insect pests and their damage, methods of pest control practiced, pesticide products used, sources of farming knowledge and how decisions t...

Michigan higbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) growers were surveyed during Winter 2003 to gather information on the extent of the pest status of japanese beetle (Popillia japonica, Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) within this crop, and their responses to this pest management challenge. The survey was mailed to 215 highbush blueberry farms in southwestern, central, and southeastern Michigan. Ninety...

Plant resistance against insect herbivory has greatly focused on antibiosis, whereby the plant has a deleterious effect on the herbivore, and antixenosis, whereby the plant is able to direct the herbivore away from it. Although these two types of resistance may reduce injury and yield loss, they can produce selection pressures on insect herbivores that lead to pest resistance. Tolerance, on the...

Urbanization is a product of human population growth and industrialization. In industrialized as well as developing countries, urbanization has moved humans away from many arthropod pests, but into intimate associations with others. Since the introduction of synthetic organic insecticides, urban dwellers have fought pests almost exclusively with repeated applications of chemicals. In agricultur...

The use of neonicotinoid seed treatments is a nearly ubiquitous practice in sunflower (Helianthus annuus) pest management. Sunflowers have a speciose pest complex, but also harbor a diverse and abundant community of beneficial, nontarget organisms which may be negatively affected by pest management practices. Here, we investigate how the foliar and subterranean arthropod pest communities in sun...

With the advent of data generation, collection and storage technologies, world is overwhelmed with data everywhere. Following this trend, more and more agricultural data are nowadays are virtually being harvested along with the crops and are being collected/stored in databases. As the volume of the data increases, the gap between the amount of the data stored and the amount of the data analyzed...

The assessment on the current information on the species composition of pest rodents and the local communities’ perception on their pest status was carried out in Dire Dawa Administration from March 2010 to September 2011. Stratified and multistage random sampling techniques were used to sample representative villages (urban and rural) and respondents (n=150). Both qualitative and quantitative ...

Integrated pest management, in which the conventional pesticides are augmented by one or more nonchemical control practices, has been receiving renewed interest. What is new in this revitalization of an old technique is the careful and more knowledgeable application of a variety of control techniques.