Specialist herbivores are thought to often enhance or maintain plant diversity within ecosystems, because they prevent their host species from becoming competitively dominant. In contrast, specialist herbivores are not generally expected to have negative impacts on non-hosts. However, we describe a cascade of indirect interactions whereby a specialist sooty mold (Scorias spongiosa) colonizes th...

Twenty graminaceous plant species were evaluated for their susceptibility to the two sorghum ergot pathogens Claviceps sorghi and Claviceps africana. Five species viz., Sorghum arundinaceum, Sorghum halepense, Sorghum versicolor, Sorghum virgatum and Pennisetum glaucum were found to become infected by both pathogens via inoculation with 10 conidia/ml. Species which did not become infected under...

Five cultivars of honeydew and speciality type melons were evaluated in 2001. Performance from all cultivars was less than optimum. Foliage diseases and fruit cracking and rotting resulted in an extremely large percentage of the fruits having to be graded as culls. This also resulted in smaller fruits than desired. ‘Passport’, an early maturing, speciality type melon has characteristics that me...