Society faces the complex challenge of supporting biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, while ensuring food security by providing safe traceable food through an ever-more-complex global food chain. The increase in human mobility brings the added threat of pests, parasites, and invaders that further complicate our agro-industrial efforts. DNA barcoding technologies allow researchers to identif...

A tentative list of ecological attributes; diversity, cycling, stability and capacity, is proposed for quantification and ranking of farming systems along a hypothetical scale of increasing ecological sustainability. The modelling and preliminary analysis of four rice-based systems from the Philippines, two on-station experimental systems and two smallholder farms, confirms our intuitive percep...

1 Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China, 2 China Germplasm Bank of Wild Species, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, China, 3 Key Laboratory of Agro-Biodiversity and Pest Management of Education Ministry of China, Yunnan Agricultural University, Kunming, China, 4 C...

Use of molecular markers for entomological diversity assessment and their application in population study of aphids Jianqing Guo, Zhenying Wang* & Frédéric Francis* (1) Functional and Evolutionary Entomology, Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, University of Liège, Passage des Déportés 2, B-5030 Gembloux, Belgium. (2) State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests, Institute of Plant P...

AGRO100 (also known as AS1411) is a G-rich oligonucleotide that has long been established as a potent anti-cancer aptamer. However, the structure of AGRO100 remained unresolved, due to the co-existence of multiple different G-quadruplex conformations. We identified a DNA sequence named AT11, derived from AGRO100, which formed a single major G-quadruplex conformation and exhibited a similar anti...

The relationship between density and richness of herbivorous insects in alfalfa fields, and the amount (total length) of woody field border in the landscapes surrounding the fields was studied. Insects (predominantly herbivorous) were sampled in 35 alfalfa fields in 1995 and 24 fields in 1996, and the total length of woody field borders within the 1 km radius circular landscape surrounding each...

Assessment of genetic diversity and population structure of germplasm collections plays a critical role in supporting conservation and crop genetic enhancement strategies. We used a cultivated lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) collection consisting of 352 accessions originating from 54 diverse countries to estimate genetic diversity and genetic structure using 1194 polymorphic single nucleotide po...

Biological diversity in areas of land use (called ‘agrodiversity’ in the People, Land Management and Environmental Change – PLEC project) is not simply a function of the diversity of species and varieties of biota. Naturally, it does concern standard ecological biodiversity aspects (often termed ‘agro-biodiversity’ or ‘agricultural biodiversity’). Usually it is used to tell the tale of how mode...

Wild relatives of crops possess adaptive mutations for agronomically important traits, which could play significant role in crop improvement for sustainable agriculture. However, global climate change and human activities pose serious threats to the natural habitats leading to erosion of genetic diversity of wild rice populations. The purpose of this study was to explore and characterize India'...