information required to benchmark yields. These include Growers, breeders and policy makers require benchmarks to measure performance in regard to management of the crop, genetic improvement and prospects for investment and employment. Cropping systems are difficult to benchmark because of the unpredictable nature of the climate. In this paper previous attempts to benchmark sugarcane production...

Dr. Gordon E. Dickerson was a visionary and productive scientist whose many scientific contributions included a systems approach to the genetic improvement of economic efficiency of beef production. His most important contributions to the improvement of beef efficiency include: 1) insisting on an economic definition of the biological objectives of livestock production, 2) promoting multi-discip...

As for any species or population, genetic improvement of dairy cattle involves determining a desirable direction for improvement, identifying traits that provide information to move in that direction, quantifying their heritability, deciding how to evaluate them, and designing a breeding program to achieve the goals. With regard to these issues, dairy cattle are one of the most highly studied o...

The Lethal Yellowing disease is one of the main threats to coconut industry in many parts of Africa and the Caribbean. Planting resistant varieties has long been recognized as one of the most promising ways of controlling it. Considerable efforts have been devoted throughout the world to screening suitable varieties and have often involved international co-operation. It has proven to be a lengt...

Background: Brazil is the second country on equine embryo world production. Problems related to the application of equine embryos transfer in Brazil are discussed in this article. Review: The main factor related to low efficacy of Equine Embryos Transfer programs consists in the difficulty to induce multiple ovulations Among the most common difficulties and limitations faced in our country, we ...

The cellulosic biomass in the form of agricultural waste, is a renewable and abundant resource with great potential for bioconversion to value-added bioproducts . It can be degraded by cellulase produced by cellulolytic bacteria to more useful products, such as single-cell protein for use in animal feeds or ethanol for use as a fuel or chemical feedstock.. This enzyme has various industrial app...

We give a model of parallel distributed genetic improvement. With modern low cost power monitors; high speed Ethernet LAN latency and network jitter have little effect. The model calculates a minimum usable mutation effect based on the analogue to digital converter (ADC)’s resolution and shows the optimal test duration is inversely proportional to smallest impact we wish to detect. Using the ex...

The domestication of trees for agroforestry approaches to poverty alleviation and environmental rehabilitation in the tropics depends on the expansion of the market demand for non-timber forest products. This paper reviews published data on the nutritive values of the ̄esh, kernels and seedoils of the seventeen fruit tree species that have been identi®ed, in four ecoregions of the tropics, by s...

The coffee leaf miner, Leucoptera coffeella, is a common pest of coffee plantations in Brazil. Though it is effective, chemical control substantially increases the cost of production and constitutes a significant risk for the environment. Resistant coffee cultivars have been and continue being developed through classic and molecular selection techniques. Basic knowledge about the biology of thi...

livestock has been the foundation for selective breeding for thousands of years. However, our understanding of genetics, which is the biological basis of heredity and variation among organisms, has deepened dramatically in the last several decades. This new knowledge expands the potential applications of genetics and genome technologies in agricultural practices. In aquaculture settings, curren...