Selective breeding via controlled mating

Genetic make-up influences fitness and adaptation and determines an animal’s tolerance to shocks such as temperature extremes, drought, flooding, pests and diseases. Adaptation to harsh environments includes heat tolerance and an animal’s ability to survive, grow and reproduce in the presence of poor seasonal nutrition as well as parasites and diseases. Selective breeding is a technology that aims to improve the value of animal genetic diversity. This technology can be applied to all types of livestock, including cattle, sheep, goats, alpacas and guinea pigs.

Viresco Solutions is a consulting firm based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Its core business is greenhouse gas offset policy development and implementation, greenhouse gas emissions quantification, sustainable supply chain development, environmental offset methodology development, and providing technical assistance to others undertaking carbon offset project development. Its clients include industry and non-governmental associations, large private sector companies, and local, provincial and federal governments.

Practical Action Consulting (PAC) is the consulting arm of Practical Action, an international non-governmental organisation that uses technology to challenge poverty in developing countries. Through technology PAC enables poor communities to build on their skills and knowledge to produce sustainable and practical solutions - transforming their lives forever and protecting the world around them. Every year PAC uses technology to help over 1 million people out of poverty.

Zeromoz uses no electricity no batteries no chemicals no gasses. The Zeromoz comprises of a breeding chamber which is normally submerged in water the breeding chamber rises automatically with the heat from the sun. All larvae and pupae are killed in minutes in the hot dry breeding chamber. It is solar powered.

This section explains the life of the bee.

The diamondback moth caterpillar is a world-wide pest that can cause severe damage especially in dry, hot weather. Its high breeding rate causes problems of resistance to insecticides so alternative methods of control are needed.

Potatoes are the fourth-largest food crop after rice, wheat, and maize. This brief describes how to make best use of them.

Breeding for improved performance under environmental stresses involves activities which accumulate favourable alleles (different forms of a gene) which contribute to stress tolerance. Biotechnological contributions to crop adaptation to climate change do not only, or even mainly, concern the placement into the crop of one or more genes from an organism with which the crop could not normally breed (i.e. genetically modified crops).

Pheromone traps utilize “bug hormones” or scents that stimulate the type of scent produced by the female insect to lure their male counterparts. Males lured into traps are then prevented from mating. These traps assist the grower in determining the mating activity of the insect pest by counting insects trapped over a period of time. This information enables a sound decision to be made regarding the timing for the release of beneficial insects and the use of organic repellants and insecticides to knock down large pest populations.