Impacts of Synthetic and Botanical Pesticides on Beneficial Insects

Sustainable methods to control insect pests that affect crop yield have become a great challenge to mainly smallholder farmers. Beneficial insects in agricultural fields play an important role in natural pest control and pollination. The use of synthetic and botanical pesticides has detrimental effects to both natural enemies and pollinators in agricultural fields. The pesticides affect the survival of a range of life cycle stages, reductions in reproductive capacity, changes in the suitability of hosts for parasitising or predation, reduced emergence of parasitoids from sprayed host eggs and cause direct mortality. This has caused a serious menace to biological control agents and pollinators. When natural enemies are reduced, even more serious consequences may result for pest population dynamics which include the phenomena of resurgence and eruption of secondary pests. The decrease in pollinators reduces agricultural productivity. This review aims at exploring the side effects of synthetic and botanical pesticides on beneficial insects to give the basis for research on the negative impacts of synthetic and botanical pesticides on these insects. This information will assist in optimizing the use of pesticides in integrated pest management programmes by employing more sustainable and ecosystem benign practices such as the use of right dosage and selective pesticides in agricultural fields.

The Potential of Common Beneficial Insects and Strategies for Maintaining Them in Bean Fields of Sub Saharan Africa

Beneficial insects provide natural ecosystem services such as biological control of pests, soil formation, nutrient cycling and pollination of plants. Beneficial insects include pollinators important in the essential pollination process of all plants, and natural enemies of pests such as parasitoids and predators which are important in the suppression of pest damage to crops. Knowledge on management techniques to attract beneficial insects in the agricultural fields is a way forward to enhance agro ecosystems for increased crop production. Therefore, proper understanding and identification of natural enemies, as well as pollinators in agricultural fields, is essential in promoting biological control and pollination activity. Natural enemies and pollinators, within legume fields, play a key role in ensuring sustainable production, especially in smallholder farms. There is a limited understanding of beneficial insects and the ecosystem services they offer to the agricultural production process in much of sub-Saharan Africa. This paper reviewed and provided existing knowledge on beneficial insects in bean fields. This will give the basis for research on beneficial insects in bean fields and practices that encourage their populations.

Isolation and Molecular Characterization of Elite Indigenous Rhizobia Nodulating Phaseolus bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.)

Nowadays application of biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) through rhizobia inoculums is highly promoted as a solution to solve the problem of poor soil fertility in areas where legumes are cultivated. This is due to the fact that, rhizobia enhance nitrogen fixation, induce disease resistance, reduce heavy metal in the soil, facilitate bioavailabity of iron in soil and is environmental friendly. To get rhizobia strains which are suitable for inoculants production, isolation and molecular characterization of elite rhizobia are highly needed. Molecular characterization acts as a spark plug for discovery of many microbes including Rhizobia. Multi Locus Sequence Analysis (MLSA), 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis, DNA-DNA hybridization and SDS-PAGE analysis of the whole-cell proteins are the molecular techniques mostly used in characterizing rhizobia. But before deciding to use or not to use rhizobia inoculants in certain areas, knowing the population size of indigenous rhizobia found in that area is very important, because this is a major factor which determines inoculums responses as well gives clues on which areas need or do not need inoculation. The Most Probable Number (MPN) method is mostly used in enumerating rhizobia population of the soil. Given that, in most of the developing countries, including Tanzania, Biological Nitrogen Fixation (BNF) technology is not fully flourished;more efforts in isolation, molecular characterization of elite rhizobia and estimation of indigenous rhizobia population in various areas are required.

Investigation of Aloe lateritia Gel as Corrosion Inhibitor for Mild Steel in 2 M HNO3 and 1 M H2SO4 Media

Corrsion inhibition of Aloe lateritia gel for Mild steel in 2 M HNO3 and 1 M H2SO4 solutions was investigated by potentiodynamic polarization, Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Foutier transform infrared (FT-IR). Inhibition efficiency increased with the increase of the concentration of the gel. The optimal concentration of the gel gives maximum inhibition efficiency of 77.4% and 70.3% in 1 M H2SO4 and 2 M HNO3 respectively. Polarization plots shows that, the gel works as a mixed type inhibitor altering both cathodic and anodic reaction. SEM proves the uniform and pitting corrosion at the surface of Mild steel in 1 M H2SO4 and 2 M HNO3 respectively. Using FT-IR potential function groups from pure gel and some stretch shift was observed from corrosion product and some stretch shift from corrosion products was observed.

Performance assessment of two-dimensional hydraulic models for generation of flood inundation maps in mountain river basins

Hydraulic models for the generation of flood inundation maps are not commonly applied in mountain river basins because of the difficulty in modeling the hydraulic behavior and the complex topography. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the performance of four twodimensional hydraulic models (HEC-RAS 2D, Iber 2D, Flood Modeller 2D, and PCSWMM 2D) with respect to the generation of flood inundation maps. The study area covers a 5-km reach of the Santa B-arbara River located in the Ecuadorian Andes, at 2330 masl, in Gualaceo. The model's performance was evaluated based on the water surface elevation and flood extent, in terms of the mean absolute difference and measure of fit. The analysis revealed that, for a given case, Iber 2D has the best performance in simulating the water level and inundation for flood events with 20- and 50-year return periods, respectively, followed by Flood Modeller 2D, HEC-RAS 2D, and PCSWMM 2D in terms of their performance. Grid resolution, the way in which hydraulic structures are mimicked, the model code, and the default value of the parameters are considered the main sources of prediction uncertainty.

Determination of Reference Evapotranspiration Using Penman-Monteith Method in Case of Missing Wind Speed Data under Subhumid Climatic Condition in Hungary

The reference evapotranspiration was calculated using Penman-Monteith method proposed. This method was evaluated on data measured by lysimeter in Szarvas experimental station in Hungary. The results of the two methods were in good agreement. However, this method requires an amount of data which is not available at all sites of meteorological measurement. Therefore it was necessary to investigate which elements influencing evapotranspiration are important and which elements are less important. With the help of investigation was indicated that radiation and vapor pressure deficit play important role in determination of reference evapotranspiration. Taking into account this there was two possibilities to calculate evapotranspiration. One of these is to use Penman-Monteith formula with constant wind speed as advised by Allen. Another one is to neglect wind speed data. Both methods were investigated and the method with constant wind speed was found better in a subhumid climatic condition of Hungary.

Inhibition of Aluminium Corrosion Using <i>Carica papaya</i>Leaves Extract in Sulphuric Acid

Inhibition of aluminium corrosion using C. papaya leaves extract in 1.0 M H2SO4 was investigated by using gravimetric analysis at various concentrations and temperatures: 303 K, 313 K and 323 K. Characterization was done by using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. Results show that, inhibiting ability of the extract was due to its adsorption onto the metal surface through Langmuir adsorption isotherm. Thermodynamic (Gibbs energy, entropy and heats of adsorption) and kinetic parameters (activation energy and entropy of activation) were also determined. All of these agreed to physical adsorption of inhibitor onto the aluminium surface.