• If you need help identifying a pepper, disease, or plant issue, please post in Identification.

misc Flightless Ladybugs

HAH! I was just about to hang gauze cloth to keep a few ladybugs around when the little buggers flew off :P
 
Thanks for posting, this looks awesome :) Hopefully Canada doesn't stay true to form and take a decade or more to approve this.
 
That is bad ass. Too bad it would cost an arm and leg to buy them in Japan probably. I looked up prices for parasitic wasps and gave up... -_-
 
Good thing I did though, b/c found them hanging out in the garden anyway lol.
 
This kind of thing always leaves me wondering if it's really a good idea or not - did anything besides flight get engineered out of the bugs that is just not apparent yet? Or did some negative trait come along with it? Time will tell. 
 
That aside, the article is accurate in its description of only a portion of ladybugs released hang around. I've released them inside my house when my overwinters have gotten attacked by aphids, and the same is true here. But the reality is that it only takes a few ladybugs to decimate a bunch of aphids. Ladybug larvae are also voracious eaters of aphids. Honestly, I can't keep enough aphids around to feed the ladybugs after a fairly short period of time. I give them agave nectar mixed with water, but that's not their natural food. They end up leaving after all the aphids are gone.
 
Ladybirds is no longer a fitting alternative name ^_^
 
I bought 3000 ladybugs 2 days ago. Released them, and now 2 days later I see about 5 stuck around lol. Hope they laid eggs.
 
Never-minding the potential concerns about this tinkering, it sure would help me out a lot to have flightless ladybugs!
 
Engineered flightless ladybugs? It's wrong, period! Many, if not most of the people on this forum seem to be opposed to messing with nature. This is exactly that to the extreme. Just leave stuff alone. I won't get into Chinese and Japanese "engineered" EVERYTHING but I will say that my first year overwintering, I had a huge aphid problem. Ten minutes on the net and seven dollars spent at the drug store and they were gone. Flightless ladybugs...amazing.
 
Sorry but the fine people at the "research centre in Hiroshima prefecture, Japan" touched on a tender nerve. lol
 
I'm undecided as to if it's a good thing or not. But I knew a few people on here would be interested.

Yeah I'd worry about the native species being affected. But it's a great solution for indoor greenhouses.
 
       Is'nt there a type of japanese ladybug here in the midwest that bites?I know the soybean farmers complain about them.I have doubts that we would be able to import the flightless type,but what do I know. :rolleyes:
 
We used to do this with fruit flys in college through natural means. We would take ones missing certain traits and breed them with healthy ones naturally. So some would be normal, some blind, some flightless and some flightless and blind. 
 
georgej said:
thanks. ignorant remarks like this are always appreciated by those of us who live in Japan.
Click to expand...
my apologies for being insensitive georgej. it was an inappropriate joke.
 
JoynersHotPeppers said:
We used to do this with fruit flys in college through natural means. We would take ones missing certain traits and breed them with healthy ones naturally. So some would be normal, some blind, some flightless and some flightless and blind. 
Click to expand...
 
Delta said:
Engineered flightless ladybugs? It's wrong, period! Many, if not most of the people on this forum seem to be opposed to messing with nature. This is exactly that to the extreme.
Click to expand...
 
the article says they had a 30 generation breeding program on par to what Joyners did, so I'm guessing Delta shouldn't be quite so alarmed about "engineering" insects. Dachshunds, pitbulls, welsh terriers, flightless ladybugs...
 
 
most of the people on this forum seem to be opposed to messing with nature
Click to expand...
Except, of course, when it comes to messing with the nature of peppers by crossing, tweaking, mutating.
 
I can guarantee you there are a few here that wouldn't be opposed to planting a load of peppers right in a toxic or nuclear waste dump just to see what they would get. :party:
 
Gotrox said:
Except, of course, when it comes to messing with the nature of peppers by crossing, tweaking, mutating.
 
 
Click to expand...
 
Hmm...I think there's a difference between growing green Cauliflower and trying to raise a chicken that has no head or feet, just wings, breasts and legs. Yum! lol
 
You have to remember that the vast majority of agriculture as we know it is a result of hundreds if not thousands of years of selective breeding.
From the beef or corn on your plate, to the dog you keep as a pet. Selective breeding.

Essentially, that's all this is. I didn't see anything about gm.
 
 
Since chromosome segregation is driven by microtubules, colchicine is also used for inducing polyploidy in plant cells during cellular division by inhibiting chromosome segregation during meiosis; half the resulting gametes, therefore, contain no chromosomes, while the other half contain double the usual number of chromosomes (i.e., diploid instead of haploid, as gametes usually are), and lead to embryos with double the usual number of chromosomes (i.e., tetraploid instead of diploid). While this would be fatal in most higher animal cells, in plant cells it is not only usually well tolerated but in fact frequently results in plants that are larger, hardier, faster-growing, and in general more desirable than the normally diploid parents; for this reason, this type of genetic manipulation is frequently used in breeding plants commercially.
Click to expand...
 
Colchicine, though not gene splicing to produce chimera's, is genetic manipulation.
 
Put it in the search box and see where it is being attempted on peppers here.
 
Not knocking it, well established in ag.
 
Just sayin'.
 
Hmm...I think there's a difference between growing green Cauliflower and trying to raise a chicken that has no head or feet, just wings, breasts and legs. Yum! lol
Click to expand...
 
Turkeys already have to be artificially inseminated because they basically are just wings breasts and legs now..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top