The research team led by Dr. WU Kong-ming from the Institute of Plant Protection, CAAS has recently launched another milestone in plant protection and bio-safety by publishing its research paper entitled Mirid Bug Outbreaks in Multiple Crops Correlated with Wide-Scale Adoption of Bt Cotton in China on the May 28 issue of the on-line Science Magazine.

This paper analyses the long-term ecological effect of commercialized Bt cotton on the population size of mirid bugs (Heteroptera: Miridae), a non-target insect pest of Bt. Field trials conducted over 10 years in northern China showed that mirid bugs have progressively increased population sizes and have acquired pest status in cotton and other multiple crops, in association with a regional increase in Bt cotton adoption. More specifically, the analyses shown that Bt cotton has become a source of mirid bugs and that their population increases are related to drops in insecticide use in this crop. Hence, alterations of pest management regimes in Bt cotton could be responsible for the appearance and subsequent spread of non-target pests at an agro-landscape level.

Since 2006, altogether 1665 scientific papers written by CAAS researchers were incorporated into Science Citation Index (SCI), including the Science cover story (September 19 2008: vol. 321) Suppression of Cotton Bollworm in Multiple Crops in China in Areas with Bt Toxin-Containing Cotton by Dr. WU Kong-ming from the Institute of Plant Protection, CAAS and The genome of the cucumber, Cucumis sativus L. on Nature Genetics (November 2009) by HUANG San-wen from the Institute of Vegetables and Flowers, CAAS.