Sentences with phrase «pink bollworm»
The phrase "pink bollworm" refers to a type of insect that harms cotton plants. It is called pink bollworm because it has pinkish-colored larvae. Full definition
Sequencing the DNA of resistant pink bollworm collected from the field in India, the team found that the insects produce remarkably diverse disrupted variants of cadherin.
sciencedaily.com
A caterpillar of pink bollworm, a global pest that evolved resistance to Bt cotton in India but the not in the U.S., emerges after devouring a boll of cotton.
The researchers learned that the astonishing diversity of cadherin in pink bollworm from India is caused by alternative splicing, a novel mechanism of resistance that allows a single DNA sequence to code for many variants of a protein.
Scientists from the UA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture worked closely with cotton growers in Arizona to develop and implement resistance management strategies such as providing «refuges» of standard cotton plants that do not produce Bt proteins and releasing sterile pink bollworm moths.
Farmers in the U.S., but not in India, adopted tactics designed to slow evolution of resistance in pink bollworm.
Their findings, reported in the May 19 issue of the journal PLOS ONE, shed light on how the global caterpillar pest called pink bollworm overcomes biotech cotton, which was designed to make an insect - killing bacterial protein called Bt toxin.
However, resistant pink bollworm populations have emerged in India, which grows the most Bt cotton of any country in the world.
In 2009, researchers in Arizona tested transgenic pink bollworm moths, which threaten cotton fields.
He said that by collaborating with Indian scientists, «we discovered that the same cadherin gene is associated with the resistance in India, but the mutations are different and much more numerous than the ones we found in lab - selected pink bollworm from Arizona.»
Tabashnik explained: «On the Bt cotton, pink bollworm survival is virtually zero.
The novel control strategy, described in the Nov. 7 advance online publication of the journal Nature Biotechnology, has allowed growers to maintain high cotton yields without spraying insecticides to control pink bollworm.
In the U.S., pink bollworm populations have not evolved resistance to Bt toxins in the wild.
The emergence of resistant pink bollworm in India provided the researchers an opportunity to test the hypothesis that insects in the field would evolve resistance to Bt toxin by the same genetic mechanism found previously in the lab.
An important implication is that DNA screening would not be efficient for monitoring resistance of pink bollworm to Bt toxins.»
«We wanted to see if field - resistant pink bollworm from India harbored these same changes in the cadherin gene,» Fabrick said.
«Perhaps the most compelling evidence that refuges work comes from the pink bollworm, which evolved resistance rapidly to Bt cotton in India, but not in the U.S.,» Tabashnik said.
A pink bollworm caterpillar emerges after devouring the seeds within a cotton boll.
But the good news is that the researchers also constructed modified toxins that can kill Bt - resistant pink bollworms.
Based on laboratory experiments aimed at determining the molecular mechanisms involved, scientists knew that pink bollworm can evolve resistance against the Bt toxin, but they had to go all the way to India to observe this happening in the field.
As a result, pink bollworm has been all but eradicated in the southwestern U.S. Suppression of this pest with Bt cotton is the cornerstone of an integrated pest management program that has allowed Arizona cotton growers to reduce broad spectrum insecticide use by 80 percent, saving them over $ 10 million annually.
Since then, scientists have used the technique to eradicate the screwworm fly, which causes lesions on livestock, from North and Central America; the tsetse fly, which brings sleeping sickness, from Zanzibar; and the pink bollworm, a pest of cotton, from California.
Caterpillars of the pink bollworm (Pectinophora gossypiella) are one of the most detrimental pests to cotton production worldwide.
Back in March of this year, however, Monsanto admitted that pink bollworms had developed resistance to Bt cotton in the Indian state of Gujarat, in plots where the single gene variety (Bollgard I) of the GM crop was planted.