portrayed by some environmental groups as an enemy of our ecosystem. I am here today, as a representative of the agri-business industry, to address concerns of agricultural biotechnology and its impact on the environment, particularly the concerns surrounding the environmental impact of gene escape from transgenic plants to wild plants and the development of resistance by pests to genetically a...

AIMS To investigate the aetiology of seed and boll rot of cotton grown in South Carolina (SC). METHODS AND RESULTS Bacteria were isolated from diseased locules of cotton bolls collected in a field in SC, USA and tested for the ability to cause comparable disease symptoms in greenhouse grown cotton fruit. Spontaneously generated rifampicin-resistant (Rif(r)) mutants of the isolates were used i...

Cotton is one of the most important commercial crops in India, playing a key role in national economy. Short duration and high yielding varieties are always required for better quality and lint production. Early maturing crops avoid disease and pest epidemics due to which plant breeders have positioned adequate pressure on the development of early maturing crop plants (Singh, 2004). Term earlin...

Humic acid (HA) can supplement the chemical fertilizers to reduce the input cost of agricultural production. Field experiments on increasing cotton [Gossipium hirsutum L, cv. CIM-473] crop yield through HA were conducted in salt-affected soil of Kohat division, NWFP, Pakistan, during Kharif 2005 at two sites being irrigated with tube-well saline waters. Four levels of humic acid (0, 0.5, 1.0 an...

The effects of two entomopathogenic fungal endophytes, Beauveria bassiana and Purpureocillium lilacinum (formerly Paecilomyces lilacinus), were assessed on the reproduction of cotton aphid, Aphis gossypii Glover (Homoptera:Aphididae), through in planta feeding trials. In replicate greenhouse and field trials, cotton plants (Gossypium hirsutum) were inoculated as seed treatments with two concent...

Five cotton cultivars were crossed in a complete diallel to study the inheritance of different polygenic traits. Genotypic differences were found to be significant (P<0.01) for all the characters. Adequacy tests disclosed that data of all the parameters were fully adequate for genetic analysis except bolls per plant, staple length, fibre strength, and fibre fineness, which was partially or not ...

Salinity is a common abiotic stress during the cotton growing season. Salinity stress causes a series of negative effects on cotton growth, yield, and fiber quality. Although cotton is considered as moderately sensitive to saline with a . dS m-1 threshold salinity level, its yield, quality, and seed germination are affected by different salinity levels. Therefore, identification of salt-toleran...

INTRODUCTION: The African continent offers a wide diversity of approaches to cotton sector organization. This has led to recurrent debates about the relative strengths and weaknesses of different forms of organization. Experience has shown that the structure of the markets in which farmers sell their seed cotton has a strong influence on how other activities in the sector are organized (e.g., i...