Adult parasitoids of pest insects rely on floral resources for survival and reproduction, but can be food-deprived in intensively managed agricultural systems lacking these resources. Stink bugs are serious pests for crops in southwest Georgia. Provisioning nectar-producing plants for parasitoids of stink bugs potentially can enhance biocontrol of these pests. Knowledge of spatial and temporal ...

Reduced insecticide use in cotton, Gossypium hirsutum L., as a consequence of the Boll Weevil Eradication Program and the broad adoption of Bt cotton, have helped make the tarnished plant bug, Lygus lineolaris (Palisot de Beauvois), a consistent pest of cotton each year in the mid-south. Maize, Zea mays L., has been implicated as having a role in the season-long dynamics of tarnished plant bug...

Recently, several invasive mealybugs (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) have rapidly spread to Asia and have become a serious threat to the production of cotton including transgenic cotton. Thus far, studies have mainly focused on the effects of mealybugs on non-transgenic cotton, without fully considering their effects on transgenic cotton and trophic interactions. Therefore, investigating the potent...

The grasshopper is found all the year round. It is considered as a pest for seedlings. The consumption index differed significantly between groups fed on different diets. Mated females consume more food than virgin females or virgin males. The highest values were recorded for the bean seedlings fed groups indicating some inadequacy in the nutritional value of bean. The growth rate was the highe...

The polyphagous mirid bug Apolygus lucorum (Heteroptera: Miridae) has more than 200 species of host plants and is an insect pest of important agricultural crops, including cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) and mungbean (Vigna radiata). Previous field trials have shown that A. lucorum adults prefer mungbean to cotton plants, indicating the considerable potential of mungbean as a trap crop in cotton fi...

The beet armyworm, Spodoptera exigua (Hübner) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae), is an important pest of numerous crops, and it causes economic damage in China. Use of secondary metabolic compounds in plants is an important method used to control this insect as a part of integrated pest management. In this study the growth, development, and food utilization of three successive generations of S. exigua f...

Ethiopia is one of cotton-producing countries and export part its products to the international market. Cotton continued be cultivated in for many centuries both irrigation rain-fed systems. The country has a huge potential produce cotton different agroecology that absorbs large young work force. Considering suitable environmental conditions grow crop availability cheap manpower, Ethiopian gove...

This article investigates the optimal crop planting schedule and hedging strategy in the mean return versus CVaR risk framework. Crop insurances and futures contracts are available for hedging against yield and price risks. The impact of the ENSO-based climate forecast on the optimal production and hedging decision is examined. Gaussian copula is applied in simulating the scenarios of correlate...