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Biological Control in Plant Protection: A Colour Handbook, Second Edition

There has been a large increase in the commercial use of integrated crop/pest management methods for pest and disease control on a wide range of crops throughout the world since the first edition of this book. The completely revised second edition of the bestselling Biological Control in Plant Protection: A Color Handbook continues the objective of providing a handbook with profiles and full-color photographs of as many examples of biological control organisms from as wide a global area as possible. It is designed to help readers anticipate and recognize specific problems of pest management and then resolve them using the natural enemies of pests—parasites, predators, and pathogens.

The authors first describe the impact of predator-prey relationships on host plant species in arable, orchard, and protected environments. The main sections of the book include profiles of pests, beneficial arthropods (insects and mites), and beneficial pathogens (bacteria, fungi, viruses, and nematodes), featuring a tabular pest identification guide. Descriptions of biocontrol organisms are divided into four sections: species characteristics, lifecycle, crop/pest associations, and influences of growing practices. The text is illustrated throughout with color photographs of the highest quality.

This revised edition helps readers more fully understand the concepts and practice of biological control and integrated pest management. All chapters have been updated and expanded, and more than 300 new photographs have been added. The second edition covers new beneficial organisms and pest profiles, and it includes a new chapter on the practical aspects and application of biological control. It also contains a new final chapter that puts biological control in perspective, discussing interactions that occur when using biocontrol for population management as well as some of the possible mechanisms of biocontrol.

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Alvital Compact Digital Refractometer (0 to 50% Brix)

This compact, digital refractometer is designed to quickly and easily measure samples in a wide range of environments. It features automatic temperature compensation for samples and ambient temperature compensation. This allows the user to measure hot and cold samples in hot or cold environments. It features a wide measurement range that is typically not found in refractometers from 0 to 50% Brix.

The water resistant construction of this instrument allows the user to wash the meter off after use and the stainless steel sensor cup helps to bring sample temperatures closer to the meter temperature. This meter is compact and easy to transport in a pocket or on a wrist strap. It features a one-touch operation technique that is often found on far more expensive meters that accomplish the same results. The Alvital Refractometer has a high resolution of 0.1% Brix and an excellent accuracy of ±0.2% Brix.

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General Tools & Instruments MMD4E Moisture Meter, Pin Type, Digital LCD

General�s ultra-sensitive Digital Moisture Meter easily detects hidden leaks in wood, concrete, plaster and carpet. Providing accurate moisture level readings make this moisture meter great for new home inspections, locating roof leaks or even selecting dry lumber at the yard. Ideal to use in woodworking, building construction, agriculture restoration and floor-laying. Used to check wood, drywall and concrete before painting, sealing or treating and locate and identify water leaks in roofs, floors and walls. Features LED display, wide measuring range, strong stainless steel pins, audible alarms and battery status indication. Display will show the moisture content in �Percent Moisture Content� directly. Ergonomically designed and CE approved.

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Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit

First paperback edition of the New York Times best-seller.  Based on a James Beard award-winning article from a leading voice on the politics of agribusiness, Tomatoland combines history, legend, passion for taste, and investigative reporting on modern agribusiness and environmental issues into a revealing, controversial look at the tomato, the fruit we love so much that we eat $4 billion-worth annually.

2012 IACP Award Winner in the Food Matters category

Supermarket produce sections bulging with a year-round supply of perfectly round, bright red-orange tomatoes have become all but a national birthright. But in Tomatoland, which is based on his James Beard Award-winning article, “The Price of Tomatoes,” investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry. Fields are sprayed with more than one hundred different herbicides and pesticides. Tomatoes are picked hard and green and artificially gassed until their skins acquire a marketable hue. Modern plant breeding has tripled yields, but has also produced fruits with dramatically reduced amounts of calcium, vitamin A, and vitamin C, and tomatoes that have fourteen times more sodium than the tomatoes our parents enjoyed. The relentless drive for low costs has fostered a thriving modern-day slave trade in the United States. How have we come to this point?

Estabrook traces the supermarket tomato from its birthplace in the deserts of Peru to the impoverished town of Immokalee, Florida, a.k.a. the tomato capital of the United States. He visits the laboratories of seedsmen trying to develop varieties that can withstand the rigors of agribusiness and still taste like a garden tomato, and then moves on to commercial growers who operate on tens of thousands of acres, and eventually to a hillside field in Pennsylvania, where he meets an obsessed farmer who produces delectable tomatoes for the nation’s top restaurants.

Throughout Tomatoland, Estabrook presents a who’s who cast of characters in the tomato industry: the avuncular octogenarian whose conglomerate grows one out of every eight tomatoes eaten in the United States; the ex-Marine who heads the group that dictates the size, color, and shape of every tomato shipped out of Florida; the U.S. attorney who has doggedly prosecuted human traffickers for the past decade; and the Guatemalan peasant who came north to earn money for his parents’ medical bills and found himself enslaved for two years.

Tomatoland reads like a suspenseful whodunit as well as an expose of today’s agribusiness systems and the price we pay as a society when we take taste and thought out of our food purchases.

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