Results of the 1997–1998 multi-country FAO activity on containment and control of the western corn rootworm, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte, in Central Europe

A Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Technical Cooperation Programme (TCP)was undertaken on the western corn rootworm (WCR)in 1997 –1998 to establish a permanent moni- toring network,evaluate a containment and control program,test the feasibility and effectiveness of using a Slam ®-based areawide pest management program,develop training materials,and conduct a risk assessment of the potential for WCR spread and establishment in other areas of Europe.TCP countries were Bosnia-Her- zegovina,Croatia,Hungary,and Romania.Bulgaria and Yugoslavia cooperated as unofficial TCP members. The data from the permanent monitoring network showed that the WCR had spread over an area of about 105,600 km 2 in Central Europe and that economic populations had developed on 14,000 km 2 in Yugoslavia through 1998.The containment and control trapping program,although designed to determine the feasibility of restricting the establishment of WCR beetles in an area,did not prove to be successful due to the number of WCR beetles encountered and their rapid movement into previously uninfested areas.The areawide pest management activity showed that the semiochemical Slam was highly efficacious against WCR beetles with residual activity for up to 2 weeks,thus making it a cost-effective alternative to other controls.Also, investigations showed that WCR will continue to spread and establish in other parts of Europe

Fluid flow and interlinked feedback loops establish left-right asymmetric decay of Cerl2 mRNA

Breaking of left-right symmetry in mouse embryos requires fluid flow at the node, but the precise action of the flow has remained unknown. Here we show that the left-right asymmetry of Cerl2 expression around the node, a target of the flow, is determined post-transcriptionally by decay of Cerl2 mRNA in a manner dependent on its 3' untranslated region. Cerl2 mRNA is absent specifically from the apical region of crown cells on the left side of the node. Preferential decay of Cerl2 mRNA on the left is initiated by the leftward flow and further enhanced by the operation of Wnt-Cerl2 interlinked feedback loops, in which Wnt3 upregulates Wnt3 expression and promotes Cerl2 mRNA decay, whereas Cerl2 promotes Wnt degradation. Mathematical modelling and experimental data suggest that these feedback loops behave as a bistable switch that can amplify in a noise-resistant manner a small bias conferred by fluid flow.Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan; Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST) of the Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JST); GCOE of Osaka University; FCTinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

1998 Results of Monitoring Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte in Romania

This paper presents the main actions concerning the occurrence and dissemination of the adult Diabrotica virgifera virgifera LeConte species, and the results obtained in the third year of the FAO project TCP/RER/6712(A) “Development and Implementation of Containment of the Western Corn Rootworm in Europe”. A comparative analysis of the monitoring results in 1997 and 1998 is also included