Concern about the environmental impacts of transgenic crops is one of the major reasons for the EU’s quasi moratorium on GMOs (European Environment Council 1999). The contributions in this book show that the economic implications of these concerns are far-reaching and complex. At the centre of the theoretical framework for analysis stands the linear chain of agricultural biotechnology developme...

There is concern that genetically modified (GM) plants may have adverse affects on the arthropod biodiversity comprising agricultural landscapes. The present study report on a two year field experimental test of whether four different genotypic lines, some are novel with no previous field tests, of GM maize hybrids alter the structure of arthropod food webs that they harbour, relative to non-GM...

Ongoing outbreaks of H5N1 avian influenza in migratory waterfowl, domestic poultry, and humans in Asia during the summer of 2005 present a continuing, protean pandemic threat. We review the zoonotic source of highly pathogenic H5N1 viruses and their genesis from their natural reservoirs. The acquisition of novel traits, including lethality to waterfowl, ferrets, felids, and humans, indicates an...

In 2001, Hainan Sugarcane Breeding Farm bred identified as BC1 hybrid strains of Erianthus real sugar cane for the first time. Fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method in Reference [1] studied and analyzed two strains of sugar cane major economic traits of Erianthus hybrids BC1 17 to have determined it is the fine lines. Fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method, mainly relying on fuzzy matrix, has a ...

Improving biodiversity conservation in fragmented agricultural landscapes has become an important global issue. Vegetation at the patch and landscape-scale is important for species occupancy and diversity, yet few previous studies have explored multi-scale associations between vegetation and community assemblages. Here, we investigated how patch and landscape-scale vegetation cover structure wo...

Introduced species escape many pathogens and other enemies, raising three questions. How quickly do introduced hosts accumulate pathogen species? What factors control pathogen species richness? Are these factors the same in the hosts' native and introduced ranges? We analysed fungal and viral pathogen species richness on 124 plant species in both their native European range and introduced North...

In order to improve the prediction accuracy of agricultural machinery total power then to provide the basis for the agricultural mechanization development goals, the paper used gray GM(2,1) model in the prediction. Through the introduction of parameter λ to correct the background value and parameter ρ for multiple transformation on the initial data, the model was expanded to (2,1, , ) GM λ ρ mo...

Energy Poplar (Enhancing Poplar Traits for Energy Applications) is an EC Seventh Framework Programme project aimed at further improving poplar trees as an energy crop. The work is directed to understand and improve traits such as yield and wood properties coupled to Bioethanol production. The project also addresses environmental and economical sustainability questions. The final goal of ENERGYP...

Human-mediated selection can strongly influence the evolutionary response of natural organisms within ecological timescales. But what traits allow for, or even facilitate, adaptation to the strong selection humans impose on natural systems? Using a combination of laboratory and greenhouse studies of 32 natural populations of the common agricultural weed, Ipomoea purpurea, we show that herbicide...