Back from the brink: how biocontrol saved St Helena’s national tree from extinction
By Wayne Coles At first sight the humble scale insect, Orthezia insignis doesn’t seem like it could pack much of a punch in a ‘fight’ against a range of native flora – but to make such an assumption would be very dangerous indeed. In fact Orthezia insignis is a genuine invasive menace which in Hawaii,…
National Parks Week UK
National Parks Week is an annual festival championing what is special about national parks in the UK. This year’s festival takes place Sunday 22 to Sunday 29 July and aims to publicise how people can get outside and discover national parks in the UK, with many special events organized to showcase places and activities within…
Plant Parasitic Nematodes – the world’s most important crop pathogen?
By Richard Sikora, Danny Coyne, Johannes Hallman and Patricia Timper Plant parasitic nematodes – overlooked, neglected, little known and mostly out of sight; surprising then that they cause billions of dollars’ worth of damage to global crop production annually. In the tropics and subtropics they persistently undermine production, result in massive waste of disfigured and unmarketable…
Plant clinics, pests and pads of paper
“We’ve arrived everyone. Off the bus”. Ten journalists, myself and five other CABI staff disembark eager to write our own stories on this, a landmark day, for one of CABI’s latest projects – the Pest Risk Information SErvice (PRISE). PRISE, led by CABI and funded by the UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Programme (IPP), uses…
Navigating the Nagoya Protocol – CABI’s commitment to Access and Benefit Sharing of genetic resources
CABI scientists have penned an important paper published in the journal Biocontrol Science and Technology which pulls no punches when it boldly states ‘the future of humankind and the rest of Earth’s biodiversity depend upon our research efforts generating solutions to the global challenges.’ Now this stark realisation has grabbed your attention, what does the…
National Meadows Day 2018
National meadows day is an annual awareness event focussed around the first Saturday of July, but up and down the country activities took over the whole weekend. Traditionally managed British meadows are characterised by low soil fertility and actively managed cutting or grazing, supporting a range of colourful flowering species including the oxeye daisies…
The view from above
We might not all be comfortable with the idea of unmanned drones, or government satellites scanning all corners of the earth but the data produced from these constant eye-in-the-skys is proving ever more useful in today’s environmental struggles.
Reaping a better cotton crop without the use of pesticides
Kurkali is a small village with 8700 households in Tehsil Sinjhoro, District Sanghar. Most of the farmers in this village are either ‘medium-sized farmers’, having less than 30 hectares of farmland, or small, with a farm size of 1 to 2 hectares. During the summer season, farmers grow cotton followed by seasonal vegetables and wheat.…
How technology can change the way farming is conducted
The population of the Global South is growing rapidly. As populations grow so do requirements for food and nutrition and improvements in agricultural productivity and sustainability are essential conditions for development to take place. Some regions of the Global South have seen greater success than others in terms of agricultural growth, with low agricultural productivity attributed to lack of knowledge of up-to-date technologies and practices, as well as issues such as climate change. In recent years, to face these challenges, there has been growing activity around use of digital technology for agricultural and rural development in the Global South, to address knowledge gaps, and to establish the building blocks for new rural services.
Influencing Tourists Towards Animal Welfare in Africa
One of the consequences of the uncontrolled human activities is the possible detrimental effects on animals. Scientists describe animal welfare as the mental and physical wellbeing of the animal with a measure of how the individual copes in its environment and considers opportunities for expressing happiness or pleasure.