INTRODUCTION World trade in agricultural commodities continues to grow. As agricultural trade expands, it increases the risk of introducing exotic insects into new areas where they may become plant pests. The establishment of new pests can be costly due to increased crop damage, control programs, and quarantine restrictions on trade. Quarantine or phytosanitary treatments such as cold, fumigati...

Taking sustainable agriculture measures is critical to effectively cope with the effect of increasing population on water shortage. Straw mulching and reduced tillage are most successful adopted in arid semi-arid regions which affect crop production by changing environment. This review focuses effects soil environment, including organic matter, moisture, temperature, microorganisms, enzyme acti...

This study tested whether soil-applied biochar can impact the seed germination and attachment of root parasitic weeds. Three hypotheses were evaluated: (i) biochar adsorbs host-exuded signaling molecules; (ii) biochar activates plants' innate system-wide defenses against invasion by the parasite; and (iii) biochar has a systemic influence on the amount of seed germination stimulant produced or ...

Invasive alien plants can pose serious threats to cultivated and wild plants. This provides the basis to regulate them as ‘plant pests’ within the framework of plant health. To assess if a regulation would be appropriate, necessary and effective, and to identify available options for measures to reduce a possible risk, the revised International Standard on Phytosanitary Measures No. 11, “Pest r...

Cotton plant is susceptible to different pests and deceases and is necessarily treated with pesticides. Insecticides are used most of all pesticides in agriculture worldwide. These chemicals are efficiently used; however they often cause the plant to be more susceptible to pests and deceases. The reason of this phenomenon is explained with the fact that defensive compounds in plant tissues lowe...

Crop plants exhibit a wide diversity of defensive traits and strategies to protect themselves from damage by herbivorous pests and disease. These defensive traits may be naturally occurring or artificially selected through crop breeding, including introduction via genetic engineering. While these traits can have obvious and direct impacts on herbivorous pests, many have profound effects on high...

Cover crops are often defined as crops grown for the protection and enrichment of the soil. They are sometimes referred to as green manures or living mulches because if the definition is expanded a bit they are crops grown to suppress weeds, build productive soils and help control pests and diseases. Cover crops can be soil builders, soil looseners, soil water conservers, erosion fighters, nutr...

Weed control is generally considered to be essential for crop production and herbicides have become the main method used for weed control in developed countries. However, concerns about harmful environmental consequences have led to strong pressure on farmers to reduce the use of herbicides. As food demand is forecast to increase by 50% over the next century, an in-depth quantitative analysis o...

Many insect pests utilize plant volatiles for host location and untangling the mechanisms of this process can provide tools for pest management. Numerous experimental results have been published on the effect of plant volatiles on insect pests. We used a meta-analysis to summarize this knowledge and to look for patterns. Our goal was to identify herbivore and plant traits that might explain the...

Integrated pest management has historically placed great hopes on host plant resistance. However, conventional host-plant resistance to insects involves quantitative traits at several loci. As a result, the progress has been slow and difficult to achieve. With the advent of genetic transformation techniques, it has become possible to clone and insert genes into the crop plants to confer resista...