frican swine fever (ASF), a fatal disease outbroken in China in August 2018, has widely attracted social concern especially in the information era.  The occurrence of ASF led to an imbalance between supply and demand in pork and other meat markets.  As a result, meat prices fluctuated greatly during the past year in 2019.  To measure ASF quantitatively, the internet public concern index about ASF was created using web crawler methods.  The relationships between ASF and meat prices were analyzed based on time-varying parameter vector auto-regressive (TVP-VAR) model.  The results showed that there were some differences in the impact size, direction and duration of ASF on the prices of pork, chicken, beef and mutton, and the characteristics of time variability and heterogeneity were obvious.  At the same time, the impact of ASF on meat prices is not consistent with the trend and degree of ASF.  The impulse intensity is strongly correlated with the strength and duration of ASF, and it is generally weak in the early stage and much stronger in the middle and late periods.  The results indicate that macro regulations, monitoring and early-warning system, standardizing production and circulation, and the public opinion monitoring and guidance about ASF should be given more attention in future to stabilize the market expectations and to promote a smooth functioning of the livestock markets.

Improved utilization of rice (Oryza sativa L.) straw and Chinese milk vetch (Astragalus sinicus L., vetch) has positive effects on rice production.  So far, few studies have investigated the productivity of vetch under different residue management practices in double-rice cropping system.  The effects of rice straw on the growth and nutrient accumulation of vetch across seven years (2011–2017) and the subsequent effects of rice straw and vetch on two succeeding rice crops in a vetch–rice–rice cropping system, with the vetch established by relay cropping, were examined.  The seven-year double-rice experiment consisted of the following treatments: (1) 100% chemical fertilizer (F-F100); (2) only vetch without chemical fertilizer (M-Con); (3) 80% chemical fertilizer plus vetch plus a low-cutting height (low-retained stubble) with the removal of straw (M-F80); (4) 80% chemical fertilizer plus vetch plus a low-cutting height with the retention of straw (M-F80-LR); (5) 80% chemical fertilizer plus vetch plus a high-cutting height (high-retained stubble) with the retention of straw (M-F80-HR); and (6) no fertilizer (F-Con).   The yields of the two rice crops after vetch were not affected by either the cutting height of stubble with retention of straw or by the management of straw (retention vs. removal) with low-cutting height of stubble.  The yields of the two rice crops after vetch were significantly higher for M-F80-HR than for M-F80-LR, but the relative contributions of the high-cutting height and straw retention to the higher rice yield could not be determined in this study.  The yield stability of the double-rice grain in M-F80-HR was also increased, as determined by a sustainable yield index.  Significant increases in vetch biomass and nutrient uptake were observed in the fertilized treatments during the rice season compared with the unfertilized treatments.  In M-F80-HR plots, improvements in the growing environment of the vetch by conserving soil water content were associated with the highest vetch biomass, nutrient uptake, and yield stability of vetch biomass.  These increased nutrient inputs partially replaced the demand for chemical fertilizer and stimulated the rice yields.  It can be concluded that retaining higher-cutting stubble residues with straw retention could be the best straw management practice for increasing the vetch biomass and nutrient use efficiency, thereby allowing utilization of high-cutting height with retention of straw and vetch to improve the stability of rice productivity in a double-rice cropping system.

With the rapid development of high-throughput sequencing technology and bioinformatics algorithms, great progress has been made in the field of noncoding RNA (ncRNA) in the last decade.  RNA molecules have been regarded only as a messenger between DNA and protein for decades, but now they have new roles in the biological process as ncRNAs.  A growing number of ncRNAs have been identified in insects from the RNA-Seq data of small RNA libraries or transcriptomes.  ncRNAs have varied regulatory functions at the epigenetic, transcriptional, or post-transcriptional levels, and participate in almost all types of biological processes.  Here, we review the research progress of four kinds of ncRNAs, including microRNA (miRNA), Piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA), circular RNA (circRNA), and long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) in insects.  The discovery, biogenesis mechanisms, and regulatory functions of these ncRNAs are presented here to provide a comprehensive understanding of insect ncRNAs and to promote the application of ncRNAs in insect pest control. 

In our previous studies, we identified 3 Trichoderma strains with anti-Fusarium oxysporum activity, including T. asperellum 525, T. harzianum 610, and T. pseudokoningii 886.  Here, we evaluated the effects of these 3 Trichoderma strains on preventing cucumber fusarium wilt through pot culture and greenhouse culture experiments.  All 3 Trichoderma strains demonstrated higher control effects toward cucumber fusarium wilt than previous studies, with efficacies over 78%.  Additionally, inoculation with the 3 Trichoderma strains significantly promoted the quality and yield of cucumbers.  Among the 3 strains, Trichoderma 866 was the most effective, with disease control efficacy of 78.64% and a cucumber yield increase of 33%.  Furthermore, seedlings inoculated with Trichoderma exhibited significantly increased measures of plant height, stem diameter, leaf area, aboveground fresh weight, underground fresh weight, chlorophyll content, and nitric nitrogen content, as well as the activities of several stress-resistance enzymes, including superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD), catalase (CAT), polyphenol oxidase (PPO), and ascorbate oxidase (AAO).  In addition, the plants inoculated with Trichoderma showed decreased cell membrane permeability and malondialdehyde (MDA) content in the leaves.  Together, our results suggest that T. asperellum 525, T. harzianum 610, and T. pseudokoningii 886 inoculations inhibit F. oxysporum infection, stimulate the metabolism in cucumbers, and enhance the activities of stress-resistance enzymes, which consequently promote the growth of cucumber plants, prevent cucumber fusarium wilt, and improve the yield and quality of cucumbers.  T. harzianum is a commonly used biocontrol fungus, while few studies have focused on T. asperellum or T. koningense.  In this study, strains of T. asperellum and T. pseudokoningii showed excellent plant disease prevention and growth promoting effects on cucumber, indicating that they also have great potential as biocontrol fungi.

Small brown planthopper (SBPH, Laodelphax striatellus Fallén) is an important vector of major crop pathogen rice stripe virus (RSV).  Controlling SBPH population is an efficient approach to control RSV.  Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) have been reported to block virus replication in hosts.  However, the function of lncRNAs in RSV infection and replication is still unknown.  Here, we aimed to study regulatory mechanisms of lncRNA in an immune system during RSV infection.  First, lncRNA genes were predicted from SBPH transcriptomes using a bioinformatics pipeline based on characteristics of lncRNA.  We identified 4 786 lncRNA genes corresponding to 5 790 transcripts in SBPH from an RNA-Seq dataset of 15 transcriptomes.  Differential expression analysis indicated that 3, 11, and 25 lncRNA genes were highly expressed in gut, salivary gland, and ovary, respectively, of viruliferous SBPH (Student’s t-test, P<0.05).  We randomly selected eight lncRNAs for expression validation using quantitative real-time PCR, confirming the differential expression of these lncRNAs between viruliferous and non-viruliferous SBPH.  In summary, we present evidence that the expression of lncRNA genes was induced by RSV infection, suggesting that RSV might be involved in the antivirus immune system in SBPH and participate in regulating the RSV replication mechanism.  These data provide helpful information for future investigations of the interaction between lncRNA and RSV.