Regulation of agricultural pests managing their natural enemies represents an alternative to chemical pesticides. We assessed the potential of insectivorous birds as pest regulators in woody crops located in central Spain. A total of 417 nest boxes installed in five field study sites (one vineyard, two fruit orchards, and two olive groves) were monitored for use and breeding of insectivorous bi...

Background: In plant breeding program to produce hybrid varieties, pair of male sterile and restorer fertility lines are required. Differentiation of lines possessing restorer fertility allele from the lines lacking it remove the need for the progeny test, and thus reducing the time and the cost in the hybrid production procedure. Canola breeding program in Iran has concentrate...

Apple orchard management practices may affect development and phenology of arthropod pests, such as the codling moth (CM), Cydia pomonella (L.) (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae), which is a serious internal fruit-feeding pest of apples worldwide. Estimating population dynamics and accurately predicting the timing of CM development and phenology events (for instance, adult flight, and egg-hatch) allows...

The almond [Prunus dulcis (Mill.) D.A. Webb] is normally self-sterile, requiring orchard placement of pollinizer cultivars and insect pollinators. Honeybees are the primary pollinators utilized, but climate change higher frequency extreme weather events have reduced their availability to levels insufficient meet demands current anticipated acreage. incorporation self-fruitfulness may eliminate ...

Abstract New first and 1.5 generation seed orchards are to be created in Germany based on recently assembled breeding populations of Acer pseudoplatanus , Larix sp., Picea abies Pinus sylvestris Pseudotsuga menziesii Quercus sp. To justify the high expenses time cost for orchard establishment maintenance, planning should make use consolidated knowledge experience both national international sci...

Densities of an herbivorous pest may be impacted by landscape and orchard architecture. We present two orchard experiments where the densities of the Asian citrus psyllid (Diaphorina citri) were compared depending on: (1) the presence or absence of a windbreak and (2) if the orchards consisted of a solid set re-planting or an orchard with a mixture of mature and reset-replacement trees. Psyllid...

All commercial sweet cherry trees are either budded or grafted. The part of the tree above the graft/bud union is known as the scion and the part below the graft/bud union is known as the rootstock. Sweet cherry scion cultivars have been selected over millennia for many reasons, but over the past century, breeding programs have concentrated mainly on achieving improved characteristics such as y...

The apple maggot fly, Rhagoletis pomonella (Walsh) (Diptera: Tephritidae), infests non-commercial apple (Malus domestica (Borkh.) Borkh.) and native black-fruited hawthorns (mostly Crataegus douglasii Lindl.) in central Washington, but little has been published on the abundance of the fly in this region. In this paper, the abundance of R. pomonella across different sites near apple-growing area...

toxoplasmosis, caused by toxoplasma gondii (t. gondii), is an economically important disease of livestock, especially sheep and goats, where it can cause early embryonic death and resorption, fetal death and mummification, abortion, stillbirth, and neonatal death.cats are the main reservoir for the toxoplasmosis which can contaminate the environments of other animal and human beings by their fa...

in order to identify low maintenance turfgrass, turf quality of selected entries of germination stage under drought stress were evaluated by digital image analysis methods in the field conditions. the first greenhouse study examined the interaction of four different levels of soil water contents (40, 60, 80 % and 100% field capacity) on 14 festuca arundinacea entries. we determined the effects ...