Anurag A. Agrawal,* Arne Janssen, Jan Bruin, Maarten A. Posthumus and Maurice W. Sabelis Department of Botany, University of Toronto, 25 Willcocks Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3B2, Canada. Section Population Biology, University of Amsterdam, Kruislaan 320, 1098 SM Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Laboratory of Organic Chemistry, Wageningen Agricultural University, Dreijenplein 8, 6703 HB Wageningen, The ...

Cucurbitacins are feeding stimulants for diabroticite beetles, including corn rootworms and cucumber beetles, which can be added to a bait containing an insecticide thereby reducing the levels of other insecticide treatments needed to control these pests. One of them, cucurbitacin E-glycoside, is water soluble and easily processed from mutant bitter Hawkesbury watermelons (BHW) that express ele...

Field studies were conducted in 1993 and 1994 to evaluate the effects of induced resistance in cucumber by plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) on numbers of the spotted cucumber beetle, Diabrotica undecimpunctata howardi Barber, and the striped cucumber beetle, Acalymma vittatum (F.). Cucumber plant growth and yields were significantly (P<0.05) greater, and populations of cucumber beetl...

We report the case of a 76-year-old woman who experienced dizziness, vomiting, dyspnea, thoracic erythema, and vaginal itching within 5 minutes of eating cucumber. She had been diagnosed 3 months earlier with papaya urticaria and latex sensitization. The results of skin prick tests were positive for cucumber, watermelon, papaya, and latex and negative for melon and profilin extracts. ImmunoCAP ...

The integrated management of cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) diseases play a key role in guaranteeing the high quality and security of cucumber production in greenhouse, moreover, the early warning of cucumber diseases is the chief precondition for IPM (Integrated Pest Management). This paper describes an attempt to develop an early warning system for cucumber diseases in greenhouse. By analysing...

BACKGROUND Natural foods contain not only nutrients, but also nonnutritious and potentially harmful chemicals. Thus, animals need to evaluate food content in order to make adequate feeding decisions. RESULTS Here, we investigate the effects of acids on the taste neuron responses and on taste behavior of desirable, nutritious sugars and sugar/bitter compound mixtures in Drosophila melanogaster...

Molecular data suggest that receptors for all bitter ligands are coexpressed in the same taste receptor cells (TRCs) while physiological results indicate that individual TRCs respond only to a subset of bitter stimuli. It is also unclear to what extent bitter-responsive neurons are stimulated by non-bitter stimuli. To explore these issues, single neuron responses were recorded from the rat nucl...

Most animals possess taste receptors neurons detecting potentially noxious compounds. In humans, the ligands which activate these neurons define a sensory space called "bitter". By extension, this term has been used in animals and insects to define molecules which induce aversive responses. In this review, based on our observations carried out in Drosophila, we examine how bitter compounds are ...