In October 2004 the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture celebrated 40 years of existence. The creation in October 1964 of this Division, which includes the Insect Pest Control Subprogramme, marked the beginning of what is certainly a unique and arguably the best example of inter-agency cooperation within the whole UN family. The goal was to join the talents and...

There is currently a great deal of concern about population declines in pollinating insects. Many potential threats have been identified which may adversely affect the behaviour and health of both honey bees and bumble bees: these include pesticide exposure, and parasites and pathogens. Whether biological pest control agents adversely affect bees has been much less well studied: it is generally...

An ecofriendly alternative to chemical pesticides is biopesticides, which encompasses a broad array of microbial pesticides, biochemicals derived from micro-organisms and other natural sources, and processes involving the genetic incorporation of DNA into agricultural commodities that confer protection against pest damage. Biopesticides fall into three major classes. The potential benefits to a...

Citation: Alam MZ, Crump AR, Haque MM, Islam MS, Hossain E, Hasan SB, Hasan SB and Hossain MS (2016) Effects of Integrated Pest Management on Pest Damage and Yield Components in a Rice Agro-Ecosystem in the Barisal Region of Bangladesh. Front. Environ. Sci. 4:22. doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2016.00022 Effects of Integrated Pest Management on Pest Damage and Yield Components in a Rice Agro-Ecosystem in t...

BACKGROUND Zonocerus variegatus (Linnaeus, 1758) (Orthoptera: Pyrgomorphidae) is known as an agricultural pest in West and Central Africa. However, its importance in the agricultural production system in Cameroon has not been investigated. The study assesses farmers' perception on the importance of Z. variegatus in the agricultural production systems of the humid forest zone of Southern Cameroo...

Legal requirements and consumer demands for residue-free products pose a big challenge for pest control in grain stores. One possible alternative to chemical insecticides is biological pest control with the pteromalid wasp Lariophagus distinguendus against the weevils Sitophilus granarius, S. oryzae (Coleoptera: Dryophtoridae), and many other storage pest beetles. The use of this wasp as a bioc...

Owing to complex direct and indirect effects, impacts of higher trophic levels on plants is poorly understood. In tropical agroecosystems, ants interact with crop mutualists and antagonists, but little is known about how this integrates into the final ecosystem service, crop yield. We combined ant exclusion and introduction of invasive and native-dominant species in cacao agroecosystems to test...

The potential impacts of bioenergy markets on slash pine plantation management on nonindustrial private forestlands in the southeastern United States were analyzed. We developed an integrated Black–Scholes and modified Hartman model to achieve this task. The risk of damage from catastrophic natural disturbances such as wildfires and pest outbreaks associated with the exclusion/incorporation of ...

sunn pest is considered as the most important insect pest of wheat and barley in iran. different studies have shown that various biotic and abiotic factors affect sunn pest populations. these factors can influence the population density of the pest which in turn can play a role in the control of the pest. in this study the relationship between sunn pest population fluctuations and climatic cond...