Update: Plant Health News (21 May 14)
Here’s a taste of some of the latest stories about plant health, including the discovery of how pests develop resistance to biotech cotton, the intensification of the battle against coffee rust, and a biodiversity assessment of over 10,000 Ghanaian cocoa farms. Click on the link to read more of the latest plant health news!
New strategy required for delaying insect resistance to Bt crops
Transgenic Bt crops have been grown around the world since the 1990s and have contributed to increased yields by controlling agricultural pests. Due to the importance of this technology, there has been continuous study into the development of resistance to Bt crops and how best to avoid this happening. A recent investigation into the rapid…
The Evolution of Insect Resistance to Bt Crops
A group of scientists at the University of Arizona have this week published a paper in Nature Biotechnology on the evolution of resistance in insect pests populations to insecticidal proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that are produced by transgenic crops. Resistance is defined as the phenotype of an individual that gives the individual the ability to…