The Great Debate

Two weeks ago we were asked to read a pair of articles prior to class that we would be discussing during our class period the following Wednesday. In short the two articles were about the "Big Seed" companies and how they are strictly limiting the ability for private research to be conducted on their new seed varieties. After reading the articles and witnessing the rather heated debate that occurred in class, i have no posted my thoughts on the matter below.

http://greenacresblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/g-tall-corn-close-up.jpg

"Big Seed" companies have spent tremendous amounts of money to develop the current hybrids or varieties that we have today, and for that i am very thankful. However, i feel that by not letting private individuals and researchers conduct experiments, they are hiding something from the general public. Possibly long term soil affects? Long term personal health concerns? I really don't know, but without adequate testing of recent plant technologies the only real way to know is to continue on this path until something very negative happens many years down the road and think- now why didn't we force them to test their products? We will all be disgusted and criticize "those people" who absolutely forced new plant genetics upon us. How dare they! Or possibly they are completely harmless and we should do more to boost yields and continue to feed to world. But with such a large investment the companies should have some right to protect their products. A tiny bit of faulty information or a flawed experiment could cost a company untold amounts of income if it reflected badly on their products. Would the government bail them out if that information lead to their bankruptcy?

On the other hand, as an American consumer i cant see how they can be allowed to control all of the data about their products. For me it is funny that most times the company who owns the test plot, has the highest yields in that particular plot. So test plots and trials run by universities or private parties show unbiased comparisons that the average consumer (or producer in this case) can use to make decisions about what to plant. Another down side to producers is that seed costs seemingly have no ceiling. I understand that for new technologies there will be additional costs but where is the end. And with the proposed reduction in refuge acres, if resistant populations appear, "Big Seed" will again profit when they are able to release their "new resistance".

Honestly this makes for a good debate question, and their are logical points made on both sides. But for me the biggest question is where does it end? Do farmers quit buying seed that is loaded with traits? Or do producers and the public get answers from "Big Seed" firms? For now i cant see either side making a move, so time will tell.

Percent defoliation results

As i said in last weeks blog, this week i would be reviewing the results from a percent defoliation exercise we did two weeks ago. We were asked to look at 60 leaves and estimate the percent defoliation of each leaf. Afterward the actual percent defoliation for each was calculated and then our "guesses" were compared to that. So how did i/we do? Well i have posted the results from lab below-








Denton won the prize for being closest to the actual amount of defoliation that had occurred. This can be determined by looking at the Regression equation. If someone was to guess all the percent defoliation correct there equation would be equal to 1, or there would be no deviation away from the one to one line (what was actual vs. what was guessed). For all samplers involved it appears we fell into the range of R squared values from .67 to .84(Denton) which sounds fairly good to me. Overall if i read into the statistics well enough the class tended to overestimate the amount of defoliation present on the leaves, which is what i did (y=1.5264x). And overestimating seems to be the trend of the class but we did have a few participants that underestimated the percent defoliation.

Soybean Insects and Percent Defoliation

For lab this week we were asked to examine individual soybean plants and look for insects present as well as insect damage that had occurred during the growing season. I had two soybean plants, one that was physiologically mature and ready to harvest and another that was at R6 with full seed pod (shown above). With the beans being at different growth stages, i was able to look at damaged plants on both green plant tissue and dead tissue. A couple pictures of what i found are posted below.

Stink Bug damage where feeding had occurred in the uppermost bean in this pod.

Although this picture doesn't show it to well, there is a stink bug nymph just in front of my index finger.

From what i saw in lab, if i had two fields with these two different maturities i would be sampling the R6 field. From the picture i posted above you can see the damage that the stink bug had done to the bean in the pod, but it is to late to solve that problem in a mature bean plant. If you are sampling in the younger of the two beans you may be able to save some yield at that point. To go along with that i found a nymph on my younger plant so there must have been adults present in the field. Both my old and young soybeans plants showed some damage from Bean Leaf Beetle, possible grasshopper and Stink bugs. If i had 30 plant samples that showed all the same type of damage from the 3 insects listed above, i believe there would be enough pressure to treat the R6 field with an insecticide. My concern with that statement is the maturity of the field, if my plant was slightly behind on a field basis then it may be to late to see any benefit from treating, so it is somewhat hard to call with just two plants.

http://ipm.illinois.edu/hyg/insects/japanese_beetles/images/2_03.jpg

Once we had completed our evaluation of the bean plants we were asked to do some quick estimates of percent defoliation on 60 soybean leaves that were spread across the lab tables. I will comment more on this next week as we have not received any results yet, just did the guessing part.

Lab #3 - Stink Bug Sampling Size

http://fieldandswamp.com/images/green%20stink%20bug%20durham%20113005.JPG

A brief overview of the Stink Bug- the Green stink bug, Acrosternum hilare is a member of the order Hemiptera and as stated in early lab blogs they have piercing/sucking mouthparts. They are pests on a variety of plants such as cotton, soybean and corn when full grown the Stink bugs are nearly 18mm, they go through simple metamorphosis.

For this weeks lab we went to the Ashland Bottoms Research Farm. Where we performed sampling for Stink bugs in a production soybean field using a sweep net. We were asked to take fifteen samples (ten sweeps per sample) and record the densities we found of both the adult and nymph Stink bugs in each sample. As well as record the amount of time it took to collect each sample. From the data collected we were then to calculate the optimum number of samples needed to estimate the stink bug densities at 95 and 99% confidence intervals for the field. The Calculations are shown below.


When interpreting the values I had for my sweep net samples I used this website- http://easycalculation.com/statistics/standard-deviation.php This website does a very good job at simplifying the data, and all that needs to be inserted is the amount of stink bugs that were caught in each sample. The calculator does the rest.

As you can see from the above page I posted, that for a 95% confidence interval 5719 sample would need to be taken. For a 99% confidence interval 321,701 samples need to be taken to achieve this accuracy with the data set I sampled. Please note that theses numbers are not realistic to perform and that my dataset is somewhat skewed with large values like the 24 stink bugs I recorded for sample 5. This variability increases the number of samples required for accuracy and the time it would take, for the fifteen samples that I took it took over 20 minutes, so it would take much longer to obtain 321,701 samples. When obtaining my samples I performed a siz-zag pattern making a horseshoe thru the majority of the field. The sampling pattern matters because I want to be representative of the whole field not just a small area, to know if there is enough bugs present to justify treatment or not. The amount of time presence/absence sampling could save is a good amount. I didn’t have an actual stopwatch out in the field last week and had to rely on my cell phone to record the times. So it is hard for me to put an exact time amount on it, but presence/absence would be faster.


Overall this lab was more fun than the last couple weeks; we finally got out into the fields and were able to do some real scouting which I enjoy. The topic covered today and the lab itself showed how sampling efficiency, accuracy and precision were all related to taking samples in the field. Being efficient was important because the van rolled at 4pm and we had to be done by then. Accuracy and precision are necessary to establishing the actual densities that are present. My data had some outliers and thus my confidence intervals were skewed but having consistent data would have helped to nail down an accurate population.

http://langlade.uwex.edu/ag/images/green_stink_bug_nymph_000.jpg

My introduction to Web Tools, Lab #2

Intro - For week #2 of lab we were going to take counts of actual aphids on soybean plants. However this was a backup plan to the original field trip we were supposed to have taken. Unfortunatly the weather had other ideas and it was to wet to go last week. During lab we proposed a ton of questions about the webtools we would be using in class this semester and actually never took any aphid counts 'unfortunately'. We spent the entire class period going over our web tools and how to use them correctly.



http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/04/05/powerpoint1_wideweb__470x279,0.jpg

Results -So, for this weeks lab assingment we were to perform some small tasks with some of the web tools we would be using throught the semster to help us become more familiar with how to use them. We were given some basic instructions of what to do at each websit and then had to perform them. Below i have listed the program and what it was that i did within each.



Twitter- Sent a direct message. This program is really simple to use in my experience and works pretty slick as far as this class goes.



Diigo- Bookmarked a page and shared it with a group. Diigo has a very good purpose and i think as the semester goes along i will become more familiar with it. But at this point im a little shaky on all the functions and what i can do with them.



Wetpaint- Updated my personal info and about me. This wasnt to hard to accomplish at all, but i guess im a little unsure where it fits into the class at this point. Mostly likely i/we will find out soon enough.



Youtube- I added a video to the group websit. This video doesnt pertain alot to just entomology but actually ties several things together. Im familiar with youtube and have used it a fair amount for killing down time. There are hours of pointless and stupid videos on there, but i found one that pertains to agriculture and has some IPM stuff as well. I posted it below.





Blogspot- For blogspot i had to create this entry. This program seems to work well from what i have experienced. I have no other blogging experience so this is all i have to go by.



Discussion- Overall i was a little frustrated with some of these programs, sitting down and attempting to learn them all in one night isnt really an option for me but over a couple days i was able to finish all these little tasks. Youtube probably took the longest because i was just watching farming videos and kinda forgot what i was doing one night. Twitter works the easiest for me. Blogspot works well also but i wish it had a spell check feature! Hopefully with some practice i can get a handle on how to use all these programs before the semester is totally over. But i was glad we didnt have to count aphids as i have a good handle on that from my past 2 summers interning with a crop consultant.

What's in the bag? Lab #1

Going thru the samples that were brought into lab was quite tedious and time consuming. There were many insects and plant material in the bag so it took most all of the lab time to look thru the sample. I was able to sort out several different types of insects in both the alfalfa and soybeans. I ended up finding 11 unique arthropods in the alfalfa and 9 in the soybeans. After sorting them out into groups by the mouthparts that they had i recorded what i had found. For the alfalfa i had 5 piercing/sucking, 5 chewing and 1 sponging. It was a mixture of Stink bugs, Leafhoppers, Tarnished plant bug, Grasshoppers and Flies with varying amounts along with several insects i was unable to identify. From the bean sample i found 5 piercing/sucking, 3 chewing and 1 sponging. In that sample i had Stink bugs, Aphids, Tarnished plant bugs, Leafhoppers, Grasshoppers, Bean Leaf Beetle, Cuccumber beetle and Flies with the majority of insects in that sample being Bean Leaf Beetle and Grasshoppers.

Limitations to doing this in the field would not be having a microscope to see the insects as well as i could in lab. Also they are slightly more active when they are fresh out of the net and havent been frozen. Having a field reference booklet with you would help to id some insects and would have helped in this lab when sorting insects out.

For my detailed drawing i chose to do the grasshopper as it was the easiest to view in the microscope and most litertature has some drawings of the grasshopper in them. At the top of todays blog i put the drawings i did in class as well as i have included some other picture showing more detailed images of the grasshopper and its major parts below here.

These three grasshopper images can be found at http://www.sidney.ars.usda.gov/grasshopper/ID_Tools/F_Guide/extanat.htm


This lab was a fun lab and it was a good refresher on insects and some insect classification stuff that i had forgoten since i took an entomology class. Some of the names and insect parts have come back to me now so hopefully i have them stored in the brain for this semester.