This chapter details the significant global adoption of genetically engineered maize and surveys current traits and future trends. The first generation of commercial biotech maize products were single-gene, insect-resistant traits for Lepidopteran pests, primarily European corn borers, Ostrinia...

This chapter outlines established methods for the assessment of damage and losses caused by rodents to certain crops (rice, oil palms, coconuts, maize, sugarcane and cocoa) and stored products. The importance of damage assessment data in predicting the cost and benefits of implementing rodent...

The estimation of rates and patterns of spread is one of the key steps in a pest risk assessment. Pest risk analysts across the world wish to make quantitative, scientifically defensible assessments of likely spread by invasive alien species. However, data and time to develop detailed models for...

This book contains 16 chapters focusing on the recombinant DNA techniques and transformation methods used by the commercial maize biotechnology sector, current traits and future trends of the global adoption of transgenic maize, specific breeding challenges and the current trends in applied sorghum ...

Maize is the staple food in Malawi where it is mainly cultivated by smallholder farmers under rainfed conditions. Due to increasing climatic uncertainty and declining soil fertility, crop failures often result in shortages affecting up to 1.6 million people every year. An estimated 47% of the...

This chapter provides guidance on mapping risks posed by invasive alien species to support pest risk analysis (PRA), the process required to justify phytosanitary measures. Because pest risk mapping can be challenging and resource-intensive, the situations in which risk maps are particularly useful ...

We present a method to simulate atmospheric dispersal events in invasion ecology using examples of two economically important and highly mobile insect species: the bird cherry-oat aphid, Rhopalosiphum padi (which vectors yellow dwarf viruses to maize, barley, oats and wheat); and the biting midge, ...

The evolution of resistance to Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) maize by the African stem borer, Busseola fusca, in South Africa highlighted the importance of the development of appropriate integrated resistance management (IRM) strategies for stem borers in Africa. Landscape heterogeneity is...

Since first being commercialized in 1996, transgenic maize expressing Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) proteins has gained widespread acceptance in the world. In 2013, nearly 50 Mha of Bt maize were planted in 15 countries. In the same year, growers in the USA alone planted c.30 Mha of Bt maize, which...

Throughout this book, several authors have reviewed the pest resistance challenges within the context of the use of genetically modified (GM) crops, the solutions that are necessary to mitigate the evolution of insect pest resistance and the continued need for effective insect resistance management ...