The ACP guidelines state that ‘Containers must drain well with no internal recesses which could trap the product’ yet a number of containers do not meet this standard. The European Crop Protection Association (ECPA)’s basic requirements state that containers ‘should drain well and facilitate easy and effective rinsing to maximize product residue removal’. This falls short of the ‘must’ in our o...

1.1. The credit problem There are many people in the world who have major difficulties obtaining credit. This can drastically constrain the economic opportunities available to them – they cannot start their own businesses, plant new high yielding varieties of crops, or survive through bad times caused by crop disasters or other factors. Without access to credit, they are stuck in a poverty trap...

Highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum L.) is a native North American crop dependent upon pollen movement by bees for high fruit set and large berries. Commercial blueberry farmsuse honeybees (ApismelliferaL.) to provide pollination services, but there is concern regarding their long-term sustainability as crop pollinators. We conducted a 3-yr study at 15 farms to identify the bee community a...

Sunflower broomrape is a noxious parasitic weed which has caused severe damage to crop ecosystems. Trap crops can release a mixture of allelochemicals to induce the germination of sunflower broomrape. We studied the allelopathic effects of soybean on sunflower broomrape. Fourteen common soybean cultivars were grown in pots. Samples were collected from soybean plants and rhizosphere soil at five...

Previously, cell type-specific expression of AtHKT1;1, a sodium transporter, improved sodium (Na(+)) exclusion and salinity tolerance in Arabidopsis. In the current work, AtHKT1;1, was expressed specifically in the root cortical and epidermal cells of an Arabidopsis GAL4-GFP enhancer trap line. These transgenic plants were found to have significantly improved Na(+) exclusion under conditions of...

The impact of land use intensity on the diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) was investigated at eight sites in the "three-country corner" of France, Germany, and Switzerland. Three sites were low-input, species-rich grasslands. Two sites represented low- to moderate-input farming with a 7-year crop rotation, and three sites represented high-input continuous maize monocropping. Repre...

This paper analyzes whether there is evidence of a poverty trap driven by credit constraints and non-linearities in the return to capital in rural China in the 1990s, estimating the effect of positive income shocks experienced by rural households as a result of increases in the price paid for mandatory grain quota sales. Households were required to sell part of their grain output to the state a...