Tag: horticulture

Arguably, absolute microbial population densities are more important than the relative proportion, because these determine the absolute production rates and concentrations of metabolites and signals of microbial origins. Rates of production of fermentation products need to be measured as an index of microbial community function. Further research into the characterization and metabolic activity of the gut microbiota may provide the key to the influence of the environment on colonic health and disease. Integrating the gut microbiome data with clinical nutritional assessment, food consumption monitoring, and host phenotyping measurements in future investigations are needed to focus on the identification of metabolic impacts that mediate the effect of diet on gut microbiota as well as their synergistic effect on host immune function, metabolism, and homeostasis.The earliest cultivars of allo-octoploid garden strawberry originated approximately 300 years ago from spontaneous hybrids between ecotypes of non-sympatric wild octoploid species: Fragaria chiloensis subsp. chiloensis from South America and Fragaria virginiana subsp. virginiana from North America. Several additional wild octoploid subspecies have since been used as parents in breeding,large pot with drainage creating an admixed population of F. × ananassa individuals with genomes that are mosaics of phylogenetically and demographically diverse progenitor genomes.

While several subgenome origin hypotheses have emerged from cytogenetic, phylogenetic, and comparative genetic mapping studies, a complete hypothesis for the origin and evolution of the octoploid genome was only recently proposed with the publication of the “Camarosa” reference genome. Through phylogenetic analyses of the transcriptomes of all described extant diploid species, including four subspecies of Fragaria vesca, the putative subgenome donors found in the octoploid were identified as F. vesca subsp. bracteata, Fragaria iinumae, Fragaria viridis, and Fragaria nipponica. Edger et al. provided strong support for earlier hypotheses that F. vesca and F. iinumae were two of the four subgenome donors. Until the octoploid reference genome was published, the origin of the other diploid subgenome donors had remained unclear, although multiple hypotheses had been proposed. Liston et al.then reasoned that Edger et al.may have misidentified two of the progenitors due to bias from excluding in-paralogs in their phylogenetic analyses. To address this concern, Edger et al. developed a chromosome-scale assembly of the F. iinumae genome and reanalyzed the original data with in-paralogs. The revised analysis supported the original model that the genome of octoploid strawberry originated through successive stages of polyploidization involving four progenitor species: diploid × diploid → tetraploid × diploid → hexaploid × diploid → octoploid ancestor. In addition, the chromosome-scale genome assembly showed that the diploid subgenomes were not static building blocks walled off from one another. Rather they have dynamically evolved through homoeologous exchanges, which are well-known in neopolyploids. Homoeologous exchanges in octoploid strawberry were found to be highly biased toward the F. vesca subsp. bracteata subgenome replacing substantial portions of the other subgenomes.

However, homoeologous exchanges are not unidirectional. Although the chromosomes are architectural mosaics of the four diploid subgenome donors and their octoploid descendants, F. × ananassa is strongly allo-octoploid. Because the F. × ananassa chromosomes are complex admixtures of genes with different phylogenetic histories via homoeologous exchanges, Edger et al.developed a nomenclature that precludes oversimplified oneto-one assignments to a specific diploid progenitor. The F. × ananassa genome has not only been reshaped by polyploidization events, especially homeologous exchanges, gene-conversion, and selection , but by repeated interspecific hybridization in breeding that has resulted in the introgression of alleles from phylogenetically and demographically diverse F. chiloensis and F. virginiana ecotypes. At this point in time, the decades long debate among geneticists and evolutionary biologists about the origin of the F. × ananassa genome seems to have reached an initial zenith. Remaining disagreements might only be settled when chromosome-scale assemblies of the other hypothesized diploid progenitors are assembled and analyzed. Aside from the question of subgenome origin, what other evolutionary questions might be worthy of exploration at this juncture? First, while the four extant relatives of the diploid progenitors have been putatively identified, the history and timing of the intermediate polyploids remain poorly understood. When and where were the tetraploid and hexaploid ancestors formed? Are any of the known wild polyploids endemic to Asia descendants from these intermediate polyploids? Which subgenome is dominant in these polyploids? Second, a single dominant subgenome was uncovered in Fragaria × ananassa that controls many important traits including fruit quality. Just how deterministic is subgenome dominance? In other words, is it possible to resynthesize the octoploid with a different degree of subgenome dominance, or with a different subgenome becoming dominant? The answer to this question could have implications for genetic improvement of the cultivated species.Genotyping advances in strawberry have naturally followed advances in humans, model organisms and row crops.

The development of the Affymetrix Axiom® iStraw90 single-nucleotide polymophism genotyping array was a significant advance that enabled the facile production and exchange of genotypic information across laboratories with high reliability, minor amounts of missing data, and negligible genotyping errors. The ease-of-use, speed of analysis, simplicity of data management, and outstanding reproducibility of SNP genotyping arrays have been important factors in their continued adoption in strawberry and other plant species with complex genomes. Underlying computational challenges associated with genotyping by sequencing and other nextgeneration sequencing facilitated approaches have limited their widespread application in octoploid strawberry thus far. The challenges are similar across species, but obviously exacerbated in allogamous polyploids: uneven and inadequate sequencing depth, copy number uncertainty, heterozygote miscalling, missing data, sequencing errors, etc., all of which challenge the integration of DNA variant information across studies. As with the other DNA marker genotyping approaches reviewed here, the first GBS study in octoploid strawberry utilized the diploid F. vesca reference genome in combination with a phylogenetic approach for aligning, classifying, and calling DNA variants. Recently, Hardigan et al. whole-genome shotgun sequenced 88 F. × ananassa, 23 F. chiloensis, and 22 F. virginiana germplasm accessions. Strikingly, 80% of the short-read DNA sequences uniquely mapped to single subgenomes in the octoploid reference. Approximately, 90M putative DNA variants were identified among F. × ananassa, F. chiloensis, and F. virginiana individuals, whereas 45M putative DNA variants were identified among F. × ananassa individuals. An ultra-dense framework was then developed of genetically mapped DNA variants across the octoploid genome by WGS sequencing 182 full-sib individuals from a cross between F. × ananassa “Camarosa” and F. chiloensis subsp. lucida “Del Norte”. Large expanses of homozygosity within the commercial hybrid parent prevented complete end-toend mapping of all 28 octoploid chromosomes in F. × ananassa as was accomplished with the wild parent, further demonstrating the value of dense NGS data for understanding sources of genotyping and mapping challenges in the octoploids. As these WGS-GBS and GBS mapping results demonstrate, several NGS-based genotyping approaches should work well in combination with the octoploid reference genome. In summary, while the complexity of the octoploid genome has historically complicated DNA variant genotyping and genetic mapping in strawberry,square pot the chief technical challenges were addressed with: the development of a high-quality octoploid genome assembly; WGS resequencing of numerous octoploid individuals that shed light on the extent of intra- and inter-homoeologous nucleotide variation; identification and physical mapping of DNA variants across the octoploid genome; and comparative genetic mapping of the wild octoploid progenitors of F. × ananassa using SNPs anchored to the octoploid reference genome. DNA variants genotyped with different platforms and approaches predating the octoploid reference genome were independent and disconnected, resulting in the proliferation of linkage group nomenclatures, absence of a universal linkage group nomenclature, uncertainty in the completeness of genome coverage, and inability to cross-reference physical and genetic mapping information across studies, populations, and laboratories. The DNA marker sequences from many of the previously published mapping experiments were either not readily available or too short or nonspecific to enable unambiguous mapping to the octoploid reference genome. The one exception was the genetically mapped double digest restriction-associated DNA sequence markers described by Davik et al., which were used by Edger et al. for scaffolding the octoploid reference genome. Most F. vesca DNA probe sequences used to assay SNPs on the iStraw35 and iStraw90 SNP arrays were too short and nonspecific to unambiguously determine their physical marker locations in the octoploid genome. Hence, genotypes produced with these SNP arrays could not always be effectively utilized for genome-wide association studies or other applications requiring subgenome resolution.

Moreover, none of the previously published iStraw90 based genetic mapping studies have shared SNP marker genetic locations, complete genetic maps, or other critical enabling information needed to identify corresponding linkage groups across laboratories. These long-standing issues were resolved with the development of a new 850,000-SNP genotyping array populated exclusively with DNA variants and reference DNA sequences that unambiguously mapped to single homoeologous chromosomes in the octoploid reference genome. Using the 850,000 SNP array, a second array with 50,000 subgenome specific SNPs, including 5819 genetically mapped SNPs from the iStraw35 array was developed facilitating the integration of genetic and physical mapping information across studies. These new arrays provide telomere-to-telomere coverage and target common DNA variants within and among domesticated populations. Although the full set of iStraw SNP probe DNA sequences could not be unambiguously aligned to a single octoploid subgenome, the true physical position for 97% of the retained iStraw probes were identified using linkage disequilibrium with the newly developed SNPs probes anchored to the octoploid reference genome. Comparative mapping of SNPs in several wild and domesticated populations facilitated the integration of earlier linkage group nomenclatures and the development of a universal linkage group nomenclature substantiated by the observation of genome-wide synteny among diverse octoploid genetic backgrounds. These recent advances in genotyping and mapping are expected to have tremendous and immediate impacts on applied research in genetics and breeding of strawberry. But other research questions arise which have bearing on the utility of these new tools and resources, particularly with regard to diversity among genomes that is currently undescribed. For example, what large-scale structural variations exist in octoploid Fragaria germplasm? Recent advances in long read sequencing platforms resulted in significant decreases in costs and increases in read lengths and should soon permit inexpensive assessments of structural variants across the cultivated strawberry pangenome. On a smaller scale, what percentage of genes in cultivated strawberry exhibit presence–absence variation? Recent pangenome studies in plants have revealed that a significant proportion of gene content exhibits presence–absence variation. For example, nearly 20% of the genes in Brassica oleracea are found in only certain genotypes and are enriched with functions encoding major agronomic traits. This suggests that genes in strawberry will be missed when utilizing a single octoploid reference genome and genotyping resources based on that genome alone. To construct a useful pangenome, how many individuals need to be included to capture most variation in gene content? These questions will soon be addressed as additional octoploid genomes become available.For many years genome-assisted breeding in strawberry lagged behind agronomic crops and even many specialty crops. However, surveys conducted by the RosBREED consortium and funded by the NIFA Specialty Crop Research Initiative have documented the rapid rise in the use of DNA information in strawberry breeding in the last decade. In 2010, only 43% of surveyed strawberry breeders had employed DNA markers or other genomics-based tools. By early 2019, data on 12 of the 14 active strawberry breeding programs in the U.S. indicated that all but one of these 12 programs had used DNA information for at least one of four purposes. The most common application was for verifying the identity or better understanding the lineage of plant materials used in the program. Two-thirds of the programs had used DNA markers or other genomics-based tools to choose parents and plan crosses, and seven of the 12 had used DNA information for seedling selection. Two-thirds of the programs were involved in upstream research of direct relevance to their programs, e.g., creating or validating DNA tests of particular applicability for their plant materials and breeding goals. Some of these were onetime or infrequent applications; however, seven of the 12 programs reported using at least one application of DNA information “on an ongoing, routine basis” . Among the many breeding-relevant loci discovered in the cultivated strawberry genome, flowering, and fruit quality loci have been prominent, as would be expected in a high-value fruit commodity. These, include discovery of the locus controlling day-neutrality or PF and its subgenome localization as well as multiple loci controlling volatile compounds such as gamma decalactone, mesifurane, and methyl anthranilate. For uncovering disease resistance loci, quantitative trait locus mapping has been the most prominent approach.

The consortium operates under the umbrella of ALBA, a worker-supportive operation. This arrangement meets UC insurance, ordering, delivery, and invoicing requirements. When it comes to dealing with a pest infestation—especially of a native pest that can cause significant economic damage—entomologist Sean L. Swezey had some basic advice for his audience at the 2006 Ecological Farming Conference: “Don’t try to spray it into submission. Identify and enhance key natural enemies and get them chomping on it.” Swezey speaks from experience, but in the case of lygus bugs , finding specific natural enemies turned out to be a more complex undertaking than he had imagined. Although a number of lygus predators, such as big-eyed bugs and damsel bugs, occur naturally in the state, Swezey was interested in encouraging a particular type of natural enemy—a selective endoparasitoid that could help control lygus infestations in organic strawberry plantings. Insect endoparasitoids lay their eggs inside their insect host, usually when the pest is in the immature stage. When the parasitoid egg hatches, the developing parasitoid larva kills its host. Because they usually parasitize a narrow range of hosts, endoparasitoids are ideal tools for biocontrol programs. Swezey, an extension specialist with the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems ,nft vertical farming has spent years working on alternative cultural control techniques to limit lygus bug damage in organically managed strawberry crops. Finding an effective endoparasitoid to help control lygus populations would be an important biological addition to growers’ management options.

Yet when Swezey and visiting Italian researcher Gianumberto Accinelli from the University of Bologna began searching for a native endoparasitoid of lygus on California’s central coast, they came up empty. “Accinelli reared out literally thousands of lygus and didn’t find a single endoparasite,” recalls Swezey. “An insect like lygus that’s so widespread but has no endoparasitoids affecting the nymphal stage? It was perplexing to say the least.”some unexpected help in his search. “I ran into Charlie Pickett, a biocontrol specialist with the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Biological Control Program. We started talking about some old scientific literature that described the genus Peristenus [a parasitic wasp] working as a biocontrol agent against the European tarnished plant bug,” recalls Swezey. Pickett had been rearing a parasitoid species of the Peristenus genus that he hoped would help control lygus bug infestations in California’s cotton crop. His research had led him to studies done in southern Europe, where a species very similar to Lygus hesperus infests alfalfa. This pest, the European tarnished plant bug, hosts two naturally occurring endoparasites—the hymenoptera wasps Peristenus stygicus and P. digoneutis. The latter had been successfully imported to the eastern United States where it controlled the tarnished plant bug, a pest of alfalfa. Peristenus wasps attack their prey by parasitizing the nymphal stage of the lygus bug. “The female wasp grasps the lygus nymph, then oviposits [deposits the egg] into a membranous area between two segments of the nymph’s body,” explains Swezey. The developing wasp consumes the nymphal host from the inside out, killing it before emerging as an adult wasp. “A female Peristenus can lay up to 60 or 70 eggs—usually one in each host—in its lifetime,” says Swezey. Working with Dominique Coutinot from the US Department of Agriculture’s European Biological Control Laboratory in Montferrier, France, and Ulli Kuhlman of CABI Bioscience in Switzerland, Pickett imported Peristenus stygicus and P. digoneutis for release in California’s Central Valley.

He was also looking for a cooler region to try and establish the endoparasitoid. “Central Coast strawberry plantings were an ideal study site,” says Swezey.With the help of UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor Mark Bolda, Pickett released the parasitic wasps in 2002 into native vegetation bordering a conventional strawberry operation in Monterey County. “The results were very exciting,” says Pickett, who was surprised to find that the wasps had parasitized 50% of the lygus nymphs collected near the release site—particularly since these were conventional strawberry fields subject to pesticide sprays. “At this point the wasps have most likely become established, and we’ll continue to monitor their spread in the region.” Ronnie Colfer of San Juan Bautista’s Mission Organics identified a second site at Harkins Slough for additional releases.In 2004, Swezey and Center research assistants Janet Bryer and Diego Nieto released both Peristenus stygicus and P. digoneutis into alfalfa plantings established at the Eagle Tree organic strawberry ranch of Pacific Gold in Prunedale . The research group had already conducted several years of field trials at the site, working with Pacific Gold’s Larry Eddings and Joe Valdez to incorporate the alfalfa as “trap crops” in the strawberry fields. These crops attract and “trap” pests such as Lygus hesperus in a concentrated area; ranch personnel then run tractor-mounted vacuums, or “bug vacs” over the strips of alfalfa to remove the lygus bugs. During the 2004 season, the researchers found that approximately 20% of the lygus nymphs they collected from the trap crop had been parasitized by P. stygicus. “We thought that was a big success,” says Swezey. “It told us that you can take the wasp, originally from southern Spain, put them out in this environment, and they successfully parasitize the pest.” The researchers were also surprised to find that 50% of the lygus they collected from a “control” strip of alfalfa 300 meters from the wasp release site had also been parasitized by the wasps. “We probably moved the parasitoid to that strip accidentally, or it may have been moved by the ranch workers or the vacuum machine,” says Swezey.

Nevertheless, the fact that the wasps became established in alfalfa so readily was good news for the research group. After the 2004 season the parasitoids successfully overwintered in the alfalfa plots and were present in the spring of 2005. “That told us that P. stygicus was established in the environment,” says Swezey. Data collected during the 2005 season show a clear “delayed density dependence” of the wasps and lygus population: when the number of lygus in the trap crop and strawberries went up, the parasitism rate by P. stygicus rose soon afterward , and the lygus numbers then dropped. By the end of 2005, parasitism of lygus nymphs in trap crops exceeded 60%. During the 2006 season, the research group will not do any additional wasp releases, but will collect lygus nymphs for analysis to see whether the wasp species continue to spread at the site. The combination of trap crop vacuuming and parasitoid releases has led to a year-to-year decline in average lygus nymph abundance at the Eagle Tree research site since 2003 . Swezey acknowledges that at this point he can’t tease out the effect of the parasites from that of the vacuuming effort in driving down lygus numbers. “In 2006 we’ll map the mean number of parasites against this trend of declining lygus numbers and try to see how much of the effect can be explained by parasitism.” Ultimately, Swezey hopes to convince strawberry growers to limit the use of bug vacs on their crops to critical mid season periods, and to increase the implementation of alternative controls such as trap crops combined with bio-control efforts. “I think vacuuming the whole field of crops to control lygus is counterproductive,” says Swezey. “It’s a lot of effort and I think it’s quite destructive of the beneficial insect community that could greatly help limit lygus damage in organic strawberries if it were conserved.”Interest in sustainable agriculture isn’t limited to the farm fields or grocery aisles—it’s also taking root in the classroom. Prompted in many cases by student demand, colleges and universities around the country are developing programs in organic farming, sustainable agriculture, and agroecology. Recognizing this growing interest, members of the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems and the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and Student Farm teamed this past winter to develop the first national conference on post-secondary sustainable agriculture education. The conference drew over 140 students, faculty, staff and administrators from more than 50 national and international colleges and universities to the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California. Also attending were representatives from 15 state and national sustainable agriculture organizations. Conference attendees set their own agenda based on shared interests, brainstorming in more than 20 workshops on topics that ranged from how best to work across disciplines in developing curricula,vertical tower for strawberries how to develop and maintain institutional support for sustainable agriculture education and research programs, and how to incorporate student farms into education programs, to how to develop careers paths for students with interests in sustainable agriculture. According to Albie Miles, the Center’s curriculum developer and one of the conference organizers, “Many participants commented that the conference was very timely and that they had long recognized the need for a national meeting that would encourage inter-institutional exchange and collaboration between sustainable agriculture educators, researches, administrators and students.” Part of the conference’s outcome is an effort to assess the need for a national-level organization that will continue to address and promote sustainable agriculture as a field of study in higher education.

In this article we discuss the background of this effort, describe some highlights from the January conference, and offer ways to get involved in the ongoing work to develop and improve sustainable agriculture programs for post-secondary students. More information on the conference, including summaries of all the workshops, is available on the Center’s home page: www.ucsc.edu/casfs; click on the Education link and go to the Facilitating Sustainable Agriculture Conference link.Dating to the founding of the Student Garden Project in 1967 and the Agroecology Program in 1981, UC Santa Cruz has a long history of both experiential, apprenticestyle training in organic farming and gardening techniques, and more traditional academic courses in agroecology and sustainable agriculture. Building on this experience, members of UCSC’s Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems have worked with other educators from throughout California since 2002 as part of the College Farms Sustainable Agriculture Educators Working Group, with support from the Kellogg-funded California Food and Fiber Futures project. “The focus of that work was on colleges and universities that have college farms,” says Miles. “As post-secondary educators, we wanted to discuss the needs that our programs shared and to develop experiential education curricula that would incorporate hands-on work and learning on college farms into academic programs.” The California group worked on a number of projects together, convened several meetings each year, and held workshops for the last three years at the annual Ecological Farming Conference. Realizing the need for an effort that served the broader sustainable agriculture education community, the California educators proposed the idea of convening a national, multi-day sustainable agriculture education conference. “In 2005 we conducted a survey of selected individuals and US institutions involved in sustainable agriculture education to assess interest in a national conference as well as to solicit input on the conference’s content,” says Miles. “The great majority of respondents from our initial survey strongly supported the idea of a national conference.” Miles, along with Mark Van Horn, director of the UC Davis Student Farm, and Damian Parr, graduate student in agricultural education at UC Davis, formed the conference steering committee. Both educators and students provided feedback on what issues were of greatest interest and concern . Colleagues at the Center provided the impetus for the use of Open Space Technology for structuring the event such that the content of the conference was determined by the needs and interests of the participants. Both graduate and undergraduate students played a significant role in the conference. As one of the primary conference organizers, Parr stressed the importance of developing the conference as a progressive “educational event” with a participatory, inclusive curriculum. Central to this principle was assuring students’ authorship in developing the conference program and outcomes. Parr, a member of the Center’s 1991 Apprentice class and a UCSC Environmental Studies/Agroecology graduate in 2000, notes that, “We facilitated a social learning process wherein administrative, faculty, and student cultures increased awareness of their respective needs and interests. Ultimately, the goal was to democratize knowledge and practice responsibility for what and how we learn about sustainable agriculture.” With the ongoing efforts to develop a more sustainable campus food system at UCSC , members of the Center’s social issues research group are interested in assessing student, staff, and faculty attitudes, concerns and support for a variety of food system issues.

Native to East Asia, Drosophila suzukii has been a major invasive pest of soft-and thin-skinned fruits since it was first detected in 2008 in North America and Europe and has been found recently in South America. Drosophila suzukii is highly polyphagous, being able to oviposit and/or reproduce in various cultivated and wild fruits. Its fast development and high reproductive potential can lead to explosive population increases and significant economic losses to crops. Though various management strategies, including behavioral, biological, chemical and cultural approaches, have been implemented to suppress D. suzukii populations and reduce crop damage, current control programs rely heavily on insecticides that target adult flies in commercial crops. Because non-crop habitats can act as a reservoir for the fly’s reinvasion into treated crops, area-wide Integrated Pest Management strategies that reduce population densities at the landscape level need to be developed for such a highly mobile and polyphagous pest. To develop area-wide programs, it is critical to understand how D. suzukii populations persist and disperse in the landscape as the season progresses. Many environmental factors, such as local climatic and landscape traits, may trigger the dispersal of D. suzukii populations to escape resource-poor habitats or unfavorable weather conditions. Landscape composition surrounding cultivated crops, such as forests and shrub vegetation, could act as sinks, sources,blueberry grow pot shelters or overwinter sites for the fly populations.

For this reason, the availability of alternative hosts could play an important role in sustaining fly populations and dictating their local movement patterns when favorable hosts are not available. Researchers have provided a better understanding of local D. suzukii population dynamics. Still, there are gaps that limit our understanding of the relative importance of different hosts for D. suzukii within some geographical regions. For example, the seasonal periods of host utilization and the importance of non-crop hosts within the agricultural landscape need to be understood to develop area-wide programs. In this framework, this study aimed to illustrate the temporal dynamics of host use by D. suzukii in California’s San Joaquin Valley, one of the world’s major fruit growing regions. Drosophila suzukii was first detected in California when it was found infesting strawberries and cranberries in Santa Cruz County in 2008. Since then, damaging populations have been recorded from cherries, cranberries, mulberries, raspberries and strawberries, mainly in the coastal or northern California fruit growing regions with relatively mild summer. In comparison, California’s interior San Joaquin Valley has hotter summers and colder winters, and while D. suzukii is collected in cherry, citrus, fig, grape, kiwi, mulberry, nectarine, peach, persimmon, plum and pomegranate as well as in non-crop habitats surrounding the orchards, reported crop damage has been mainly on cherries. Adult fly captures show two main periods of activity—spring and fall—and low captures in winter and summer.

The number of captured flies was positively related between pairs of sampled sites based on their proximity, but it was negatively related to differences in fruit ripening periods among crops, suggesting that fly populations might move among crop and/or non-crop habitats during the year. Though adult flies are captured in various orchard crops, it is not clear whether these fruits are vulnerable and serve as hosts. For example, the potential impact of D. suzukii on wine grapes in Italy was discussed by Ioriatti et al., who observed D. suzukii oviposition in soft-skinned berries, and, in Japan, some grape cultivars were reported as hosts for D. suzukii. In Oregon, Lee et al.  found that D. suzukii was able to successfully oviposit in some wine grape cultivars but that offspring survival was low , whereas other studies observed no or low levels of infestation of intact grapes in the field or laboratory. Some of the initial work in Japan reported that D. suzukii emerged only from fallen and damaged apple, apricot, loquat, peach, pear, persimmon and plum, but Sasaki and Sato reported that healthy peach fruit can be infested. However, in California, Stewart et al. reported that intact peach fruit are unlikely hosts. No doubt, many fruits with hard or hairy skin can be colonized if wounds are available to allow flies to oviposit in the pulp. In this study, we document the temporal patterns of host use by D. suzukii in California’s San Joaquin valley by sampling intact and damaged fruits of various crop and no-crop plants throughout the fruiting season. We evaluated the suitability of key fruits, including several unreported ornamental and wild host fruits as hosts for the fly, particularly focusing on the host status of grapes—considered to be a non-preferred host—and cherry—considered to be a preferred host. Wine grapes can contain uniquely high levels of organic acids that are important for producing wines less susceptible to microbial and oxidative damage and with more vibrant color.

The levels of acidity decrease as fruit are ripening, but they remain high throughout the ripening process. For this reason, we also examined the impact of tartaric acid concentrations on the fly’s fitness. For cherries, we examined the effects of cultivar and fruit size on the fly’s performance. We additionally monitored adult fly populations at different elevations—from the Valley floor east to the foothills and Sierra mountains—to determine if the fly is active at higher elevations during the hot summer when the fly populations were extremely low in the Valley’s agricultural areas. We discuss the implications of this information for area-wide management in the San Joaquin Valley. A total of 17 common fruits were sampled in a temporal sequence of fruit ripening, including twelve important crops , three ornamentals , and two wild host plants . Samples were taken from 2013 to 2015 at the University of California’s Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center, near Parlier, California and near Brentwood, California . Bitter cherry, Prunus emarginata Eaton , and the Cascara buckthorn, Frangula purshiana are endemic to western North America; these fruits were collected at higher elevations 1683 m near Shaver Lake, California . For all species, both intact fruit and damaged fruit were collected as available, as the fruit were at a susceptible ripening stage for D. suzukii oviposition. A total of 30–50 fruit were collected when at a susceptible ripening stage for each species, although the number of intact ornamental and wild fruits varied depending on the availability.Collected fruits were placed individually or in groups of 10–50 in deli cups and held under controlled conditions at the University of California’s Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center . Deli cups were covered with fine organdy cloth and fitted with a raised metal grid on the bottom to suppress mold growth. A piece of tissue paper was placed underneath the fruit to absorb any liquid accumulation. Emerged flies were collected every 2–3 d, frozen, and then identified as either D. suzukii or other drosophilids. Only those flies that emerged within 2 weeks following field collection were counted to exclude the possibility of second-generation flies.All laboratory studies were conducted under controlled conditions, as described above . A laboratory colony of D. suzukii was established from field collections of infested cherries at Kearney. The fly larvae were maintained on a standard cornmeal-based artificial diet using methods described by Dalton et al., and adult flies were held in Bug Dorm2 cages supplied with a 10% honey–water solution and petri dishes containing standard cornmeal medium sprinkled with brewer’s yeast for feeding and oviposition. Field-collected D. suzukii were introduced into the colony yearly to maintain the vigor of the colony. All tests used 1–2-week-old adult female flies that had been housed with males since emergence .To determine if D. suzukii can oviposit within and develop from damaged or rotting navel oranges , a single adult female D. suzukii was exposed to a whole fresh fruit, halved fresh fruit, rotting whole fruit,hydroponic bucket or halved rotting fruit for 24 h in the acrylic cage. To simulate the natural decay process of a fallen orange, fresh oranges were placed individually on wet sandy soil in deli cups until the fruit started to rot. The halved fruit were allowed the same amount of time as the whole fruit but were cut into halves just prior to the test. On average, rotted fruit had 42.3 ± 7.3% of their surface covered by mold growth. Following exposure, the numbers of eggs laid were counted, and the fruit was then held in the cage until the emergence of adult flies. Each treatment started with 25 replicates; however, a few replicates were discarded because of contamination by other drosophilids that likely occurred during the regular examination for the decay status of the fruit. A sub-sample of 10 fruit was measured to determine the Brix levels of fresh and rotting fruits.

To determine the possible effect of tartaric acid on D. suzukii survival and development, seven different concentrations of tartaric acid were mixed with a standard artificial diet. The powdered tartaric acid was purchased from a wine and beer brewing store in Fresno, CA, USA, and mixed with the diet just before the diet solidified. The content of tartaric acid in grapes can vary depending on cultivar, ripeness, and environmental conditions; for example, Kliewer et al. reported a tartaric acid content ranging from 3.7 to 13.2 g/L in different cultivars and from 3.4 to 9.2 g/L in early- vs. late-harvested cultivars. The doses used here covered these reported ranges. Each treatment had 20–22 replicates, and each replicate started with 10 D. suzukii eggs from the laboratory culture that were placed in drosophila vials over the diet. The number of developed adults was recorded. A sub-sample of 25 pupae from each treatment was measured for pupal length and width , and the volume of each pupa was estimated based on the formula 2. Apple cider vinegar traps were used to monitor fly populations at four different elevations from the Valley’s low agricultural areas to the Sierra Nevada: Kearney , lower foothills , higher foothills and Sierra mountains . Traps at Kearney were placed in a mixed stone fruit orchard; traps at the three higher elevations were along Highway 168, with the foothill sites in residential yards with fruit trees and the Sierra site at the forest’s edge in bitter cherry bushes. Three traps were placed at each location, approximately 200 m apart. Collection methods were similar to Wang et al.. Briefly, traps were constructed of plastic containers filled with apple cider vinegar and a small amount of Bon-Ami Free and Clear® unscented soap to serve as a surfactant. Traps were hung on tree branches at head-height and then checked and replaced weekly from June to November 2017. Captured arthropods were placed into 95% ethanol in small glass bottle and later examined under a dissecting microscope to count the number of D. suzukii.For host suitability tests, since fruit varied in weight, the percentage of D. suzukii eggs that successfully developed to adults was calculated based on eggs per gram fruit to standardize the comparison among different treatments. The egg density effect on the percentage of eggs developed to adults in cherry was analyzed using linear regression. The percentage of eggs that successfully developed to adults on different fruit species or different cherry cultivars were subject to further analysis of generalized linear model with binomial distribution and log-link function by considering the effect of both fruit species or cultivar and egg density per gram fruit, as well as the interactions of these two factors. To separate the means among different treatments, the percentage data were also arcsine transformed as needed to normalize the variance and analyzed using ANOVA. All analyses were performed using JMP V13 . A separate analysis with 10 different cherry cultivars did not yield a significant effect of the Brix on the percentage of eggs that successfully developed to adults, although we could not rule out the possibility that Brix and other chemical properties may affect other fitness parameters of the developed flies. Many of the differences in chemical traits among different fruits could be attributed to geographic location and differences in environmental and cultivation conditions rather than inherent varietal properties, such as in cherries. In the current study, chemical differences were controlled to some extent, as cherry cultivars used were grown in the same plot with the same fertilization and irrigation regimes. The physical properties of different cultivars did not seem to affect the fly’s oviposition.

The facility will then either have one or several transformers in place to take in the energy, while also ensuring the power coming in is of the right voltage and the right type of current typically. Some data centers supplement their energy from the grid or completely remove it by on-site electrical generation equipment -either in the form of combustion-based generators or with alternative energy sources such as solar photovoltaic panels and wind-powered turbines. The power then gets transferred to the main distribution boards which house fuses, circuit breakers, and ground leakage protection units, take the low-voltage electricity and distribute it to a number of UPS systems. UPS are responsible for supplying power to a number of racks while helping clean up the electricity pulsing through by ensuring that issues like surges don’t impact equipment. UPS systems also serve as an initial backup, in case of a power outage or similar issue. In a nutshell, a UPS battery turns on after the system senses a loss of power. Their purpose is to maintain the infrastructure until consistent power returns, or if needed, until longer-term emergency power backup systems kick in. A typical UPS can provide power to servers and breakers for up to five minutes; that way, there’s enough time to get a backup generator going immediately following an outage or similar issue with the wider electric grid. In order to ensure continuous uptime and minimize outages as much as possible,nft hydroponic system most data centers have a backup power source on site or nearby. Often backup power supply comes from a fuel generator powered by gasoline or diesel.

In a data center, not only servers and other critical pieces of IT equipment require a lot of electricity to operate, but also all of the ancillary equipment. Lights, cooling systems, monitors, humidifiers, etc. also need electricity. The amount of electricity that goes towards servers versus non-IT equipment is called Power Usage Efficiency score which measures usage effectiveness. A score of 1 means that all the energy in a data center goes towards servers, while a score of 2 means that ancillary equipment uses just as much electricity as servers and other IT components . The Uptime Institute survey shows that the average PUE of a data center stands at 1.58. The average PUE for a Google data center is 1.12, but its facility in Oklahoma had a score of just 1.08 during the last three months of 2018. Today, the average power consumption for a rack is around 7kW depending upon the data center. However, almost two-thirds of data centers in the US experience higher peak demands, with a power density of around 15kW to 16kW per rack. Some data centers may hit 20kW or more per rack at times. The Uptime Institute’s latest survey found that around one in five have a density of 30kWor higher, indicating the growing presence of high-density computing. Half said their current rack density was between 10kW and 29kW. One of the most critical challenges associated with increasing power density within data centers is cooling. Alternative cooling technologies and methodologies such as liquid cooling, use of solar and wind for power cooling systems are being developed against that need. One of the largest operational expenses of data centers is the cost of energy. Cooling power consumption accounts for up to 40% of data center energy use. The original American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers air temperature envelope was 20-25℃ in 2004 based on reliability and uptime as the primary concern. Nowadays, changes to data center environmental conditions are being driven by the need to save energy and reduce operational expenses.

From 2016, ASHRAE recommended range of temperature and humidity is 18˚C to 28˚C dry bulb temperature, 9˚C to 15˚C dew point and 60% relative humidity. The Uptime Institute, however, recommends an upper limit of 25˚C. There are different common ways of to remove excess heat in data centers as shown in Figure 5.A Computer Room Air Handling is similar to a chilled water air handling system. In this system, the cooling is accomplished by blowing air over the cooling coil filled with the chilled water. The chilled water is typically supplied to the CRAHs by an electric powered chiller. The chiller then removes the heat from the warmer chilled water and transfers it to another stream of circulating water called condenser water which flows through a cooling tower. These CRAHs can have Variable Frequency Drives that modulate fan speed to maintain a set static pressure either under floor or in the overhead ducts. Heat removed from the returning chilled water can be rejected to a condenser water loop for transport to the outside atmosphere or to an air-cooled condenser, or to a glycol cooled chiller. A CRAC unit works like an air conditioner which has an in-built direct expansion refrigeration cycle. The compressors which are required to power the refrigeration cycle is also located within the CRAC unit. Thus, the cooling is accomplished by blowing the air over the cooling coil filled with refrigerant. Heat from the IT environment is pumped to the outdoor environment using this circulating flow of refrigerant. New CRAC units are developed that can vary the airflow with the help of multistage compressors. However, most of the existing ones have on/off control only. Modern data centers try to use adiabatic direct air cooling whenever the weather conditions allow. The common types of cooling are as follows: Free Cooling: Free cooling is an approach for cooling the air temperature in the target environment by using ambient cool air or water from the local environment instead of mechanical refrigeration. In this method, pumps, fans, and other air/water-handling equipment are needed. Cooling systems that use this approach are also called air-side economizers. The primary method is evaporative cooling, where ambient air is passed through a wet filter that cools it. The air then enters the cooling system at a lower temperature, which allows for more efficient operation. Evaporative assist is most beneficial in dry climates.

Alternatively, in water side economizer a source of cold water from local rivers, lakes or oceans is circulated into a data center and used instead of refrigerating a closed water loop with a chiller. Evaporative assist is an adiabatic cooling system which does not have heat exchange to the environment. Adiabatic cooling incorporates both evaporative and air cooling into a single system. An indirect ambient air cooling system uses outdoor air to indirectly cool data center air when the temperature outside is lower than the temperature set point of the IT inlet air, resulting in significant energy savings. Fans blow cold outside air through an air-to-air heat exchanger which in turn cools the hot data center air on the other side of the heat exchanger, thereby completely isolating the data center air from the outside air. Heat exchangers can be of the plate or rotating type. Heat removal method normally uses evaporative assist whereby the outside of the air-to-air heat exchanger is sprayed with water which further lowers the temperature of the outside air and thus the hot data center air. Indirect adiabatic data center cooling: The indirect adiabatic cooling consists of two different airflows named primary and secondary airflow as shown Figure 6. Primary airflow is the airflow that is used to cool the IT load. The secondary airflow is the outside or the ambient air which is used to discharge the IT load of the primary airflow. The primary airflow and secondary airflow are completely separated from each other because mixing them will create pollution and inconsistencies. During warm days water is sprayed on the heat exchanger to increase the cooling capacity of the secondary airflow according to the physical laws of psychrometrics. The water also provides a better conductivity between the two airflows by optimizing the energy transfer. Most units require a basic water softening system to produce the required water. A water storage tank is required to store a certain amount of water in case of water outage from the main water connection. There are basically two operating modes, Summer/wet: If conditions are not met for the secondary airflow, the air is humidified by adding a specific amount of water to the secondary air flow to increase its cooling capacity. In addition to these adiabatic cooling systems, direct expansion cooling systems ,hydroponic nft system powered by electricity, may be required in specific locations to reach the cooling demand of the data center. Winter/dry: Primary airflow transfers its heat towards the cooler secondary airflow without the requirement of water.

The indirect adiabatic cooler is known for its high energy efficiency reaching a cooling PUE of 1.05 at a single moment. There are three basic approaches for distributing air in a data center: flooded, targeted, and contained. In a flooded supply and return air distribution system, the only constraints to the supply and return air flow are the walls, ceiling, and floor of the room. This leads to heavy mixing of the hot and cold air flows. In a targeted supply and return air distribution system, a mechanism directs the supply and return airflow within 3m of the IT equipment intake and exhaust. In a contained supply and return air distribution system, the IT equipment supply and return air flow is completely enclosed to eliminate air mixing between the supply and the return air streams. Hot aisle/cold aisle arrangements lower cooling costs by better managing airflow, thereby accommodating lower fan speeds and increasing the use of air-side or water-side economizers. When used in combination with containment, Department of Energy estimates reduction in fan energy use of 20% to 25%. Another data center cooling technique is open bath immersion cooling which implies fully submerging IT equipment in a dielectric liquid. These baths allow the coolant fluid to be moved through the hardware components or servers submerged in it. Single phase immersion requires circulation of the dielectric liquids by pumps or by natural convection flow. These liquids always remain in the liquid state while operating. The dielectric coolant is either pumped through an external heat exchanger where it is cooled with any facility coolant, or the facility coolant is pumped through an immersed heat exchanger, which facilitates heat transfer within the dielectric liquid. In two-phase immersion systems, heat is removed through the phase change that the coolant undergoes at its operating temperature. The server heat literally boils the dielectric fluid that has an appropriate boiling point temperature. This two-phase immersion system takes advantage of the dielectric fluid latent heat of vaporization. This occurs when the two-phase coolant comes in contact with the heated electronics in the bath that are above the coolants boiling point. Once the two-phase coolant enters its gas phase it must be cooled or condensed, typically through the use of water-cooled coils placed in the top of the tank. Once condensed the two-phase coolant drips back into the primary cooling tank. The two-phase coolant in the tank generally remains at its “saturation temperature”. Energy transferred from the servers into the two-phase coolant will cause a portion of it to boil off into a gas. The gas rises above the liquid level where it contacts a condenser which is cooler than the saturation temperature. This causes the gaseous state coolant to condense back into a liquid form and fall back into the bath. In order to safely submerge an electronic device in a liquid, the liquid must be non-conductive to avoid short-circuit electronic signals or change in the signal characteristics of sensitive, high-speed electronic devices, such as Central Processing Unit s and memory modules. The liquid must also be completely noncorrosive and avoid any sort of damage to electronic packaging, contacts, or printed wet or dry circuit layouts. The liquid must be nonflammable, nontoxic, and easy to clean up if there is a spill. Immersion cooling mainly work in baths of mineral oil, and companies that have developed liquids such as Novec, which meet the criteria for electronic immersion cooling.Fuel cell devices are capable of converting fuel directly into electricity without the need of turbines or any major moving parts. The following section discusses how fuel cells work and some of the motivating principles behind their operation. Hydrogen is the most basic fuel used in the fuel cell electrochemical reactions, but fuel cell systems can operate on a wide variety of fuels. All fuel cells also require an oxidant, which is usually oxygen taken from air.

We can also more accurately estimate historic yield losses now that more is known about SWD biology, its spread, and the efficacy of different management techniques. Lastly, we can now incorporate increases in labor costs into these SWD management cost estimates. This analysis has two components. First, we utilize recent estimates of SWD-induced yield losses in the California raspberry industry to calculate industry-level revenue losses for both organic and conventional raspberry producers. Second, we revise prior estimates of SWD management costs to reflect the cost of modern organic and conventional chemical management programs and the increased labor costs resulting from the presence of SWD.Prior estimates of SWD-induced revenue losses were based on the maximum observed yield losses in different industries where SWD infestations occurred. These estimates provide information about SWD’s damage potential, but do not yield an accurate estimate of actual SWD crop damage. Actual crop damage is useful for estimating revenue losses due to SWD and will differ by year and production style. This analysis incorporates field trial results and expert opinions to estimate SWD-induced revenue losses for the California raspberry industry. SWD infestations directly reduce raspberry yields in two ways. First, fruit infested by SWD decay more quickly. These yield losses are difficult to attribute to SWD because the initial infestation is difficult to detect, and the accelerated decay has a similar appearance to decay caused by fungal diseases, bacteria, and yeasts. Second,stacking pots raspberry shippers that detect SWD infestations may reject the entire delivery from the grower.

Fresh fruit are held to rigorous quality standards. The risk of rejection of an entire delivery incentivizes growers to eliminate all visible defects in harvested fruit. SWD infestations are more prevalent late in the year as the population grows until winter weather reduces the population.Further, raspberry production is fairly concentrated geographically and the leftover, overripe fruit from nearby fields’ summer harvest acts as a breeding ground for SWD. SWD infestations are also more prevalent in fruit destined for the processing market, where the price is lower than in the fresh market. Fruit intended for processing are harvested later in the season, tend to be riper because they are harvested less frequently, and receive less frequent pesticide treatments. SWD damage rates could change significantly in the future due to pesticide resistance development and the introduction of new SWD management practices, including introducing biological control agents. Recent studies in the US and Europe found that indigenous parasitoids had limited effect on SWD populations. However, in Asia, where SWD originates, several endemic parasitoids attack and develop from SWD.We begin by examining SWD-induced yield losses in California’s conventional raspberry industry. The original reports of SWD damage in the raspberry industry indicated that as much as 50% of production could be lost if SWD was left unmanaged.Yield losses of this magnitude occurred as raspberry producers first learned how to manage SWD, but are now uncommon due to implementation of extensive academic research and industry experience. According to private communications with conventional raspberry producers, they have managed to reduce SWD induced yield losses to less than 3% of production.

In recently published reports, conventional raspberry producers that employ effective chemical management programs face virtually no yield losses due to SWD.18,26 This substantial reduction in yield losses is primarily attributable to two factors. First, conventional raspberry producers have access to cheap and effective chemical management options.Second, these producers are harvesting their crop more frequently in order to reduce the amount of time raspberries are susceptible to infestation. These observations of actual SWD-induced yield losses are consistent with field trial observations as well. Entomologists Kelly Hamby and Frank Zalom monitored traps and evaluated fruit samples for damage between October 2010 and December 2012 in both organically- and conventionally-managed raspberry sites. Analyzing the 40-fruit samples collected from these fields resulted in estimated yield loss observations for raspberry producers employing standard management practices at the time. SWD-induced yield losses for conventional producers in the study were estimated to be approximately 10% of production in 2011 and less than 1% in 2012. These estimated yield losses are consistent with those observed by De Ros et al. in Italy between 2011 and 2013. De Ros et al. estimated raspberry losses of 11.5% prior to i and 3.24% after the implementation of an integrated strategy. The yield losses observed in the UC Davis study were concentrated in the fall harvest.The summer harvest is hypothesized to experience less SWD pressure because the population grows throughout the year until cold weather arrives and lack of host fruit in the winter significantly reduces population levels. SWD biology and infestation intensity is affected by climatic conditions and the availability of host fruit, implying that different climatic conditions and influences of neighboring crops could significantly impact SWD-related yield losses.

On the other hand, organic raspberry producers still face significant SWD-induced yield losses. Private communications with raspberry producers indicate that these producers experience yield losses between 5% and 15% of production due to a lack of efficacious chemical treatments approved for organic use, and the efficacy and high cost of other labor-intensive SWD management practices. Once again, these field observations are consistent with the yield losses measured in field trials. SWD-induced yield losses for organic raspberry producers in the study were estimated to be approximately 12% of production in both 2011 and 2012. We calculate yearly estimates of industry-level revenue losses using these observed yield losses due to SWD and a procedure similar to Goodhue et al. . First, we assume an ownprice elasticity of demand for raspberries of -1.66. This elasticity value is the value estimated for fresh raspberries by Sobekova, Thomsen, and Ahrendsen .Second, we assume that actual yield losses in the California raspberry industry correspond to the yield losses observed in the field trials. Specifically, we assume that SWD-induced yield losses between 2009 and 2011 correspond to the yield losses observed in 2011, and that losses after 2011 correspond to the yield losses observed in 2012. Raspberry production and price data are obtained from the U.S. Census of Agriculture and various National Agricultural Statistics Service surveys.Table 2 provides the resulting revenue loss estimates organized by production practice and year grouping. California’s conventional raspberry producers faced a total of $36.1 million in revenue losses due to SWD between 2009 and 2011. These estimated revenue losses are equivalent to 4.62% of realized revenues over the same period. After 2011, effective SWD management techniques in conventional production eliminated virtually all revenue losses. Revenue losses due to SWD between 2011 and 2014 are estimated to be $277 thousand, which is less than 1% of realized revenues over the same period. In total, California’s conventional raspberry producers faced $36.4 million in revenue losses due to SWD between 2009 and 2014. California’s organic raspberry producers faced a total of $3.43 million in revenue losses due to SWD between 2009 and 2014. These estimated revenue losses are equivalent to 5.74% of realized revenues over the same period. Revenue losses of this magnitude are expected to continue in organic raspberry production until more effective chemical, cultural, or biological management programs are discovered. Furthermore, revenue losses incurred by organic raspberry producers could potentially increase dramatically if SWD populations develop greater resistance to the current, limited set of chemical controls approved for organic use.SWD management is multifaceted. In addition to yield losses,nft hydroponic managing SWD has significantly increased production costs for raspberry producers. Raspberry growers increase the number of insecticide applications and use additional labor to harvest their crop in response to SWD infestation pressure. These necessary insecticide applications require additional chemical purchases and access to sprayers and specialized equipment through custom application or purchase. Overuse of pesticides can lead to rejections of shipments if residues exceed legal tolerances for the chemicals; however, producers who adhere to mandatory label rates should, theoretically, never encounter this problem. Conventional raspberry producers have access to a variety of insecticides that provide excellent control for SWD populations at present. Raspberry growers observed in the UC Davis study discussed earlier applied SWD-targeting insecticides four to six times for both the fall and spring harvests. The most commonly used insecticides for this purpose were spinetoram, zetacypermethrin, and malathion.

Assuming these chemicals are applied at their maximum label rates and with generic purchase prices observed in 2015, the per hectare material costs of these insecticide applications are $179.40, $7.22, and $29.78, respectively. Using a conventional raspberry grower observed in the UC Davis study as a point of reference, an example chemical management program included two applications of spinetoram and a combined application of zeta-cypermethrin and malathion in both the fall and spring harvest seasons. Each application is estimated to have labor and equipment costs of $61.78 per hectare.In 2015, such a program would cost an estimated $581.14 per hectare in both the fall and spring harvests for a total cost of $1,161.28 per hectare for a single planting. This is consistent with the per hectare treatment program cost of $825.33 observed in Goodhue et al in 2011. Even though conventional raspberry producers have developed effective chemical management programs that virtually eliminate fruit losses due to SWD, organic producers still experience non-trivial yield losses due to more expensive and less effective insecticide options.Most California organic raspberry producers used only two SWD-targeting insecticides, spinosad and pyrethrin, during the time of this study. Of these two insecticides, only the organic formulation of spinosad has efficacy comparable to conventional insecticides.Spinosad applications are more expensive than conventional insecticides and organic growers are limited by its labeled use of two consecutive applications followed by rotation to a product containing another class of insecticide for resistance management. It is typically applied in conjunction with spinosad or other organic insecticides because it does not provide sufficient control on its own. Assuming spinosad and pyrethrin are applied at their maximum label rates and with generic purchase prices observed in 2015, the per-hectare material costs of these insecticide applications are $200.60 and $119.13, respectively. In the UC Davis study, organic raspberry growers were observed applying these insecticides between five to nine times for each seasonal raspberry harvest. Using an organic raspberry grower observed in the UC Davis study as a point of reference, a typical chemical management program included five applications of pyrethrin in the fall, three of which were applied in conjunction with spinosad, and six applications of pyrethrin in the spring, two of which were applied in conjunction with spinosad. Assuming the stated per-hectare material, labor, and equipment costs, such a program would cost an estimated $1,506.35 per hectare in the fall and $1,486.66 per hectare in the spring for a total cost of $2,933.01 per hectare for a single planting. It is important to note that even as these insecticide applications reduce SWD populations, they also provide control for other pests such as the light-brown apple moth, Epiphyas postvittana . As a result, it is difficult to attribute the entire cost of these chemical management programs strictly to the management of SWD. However, few insecticide sprays were applied to California raspberries before the SWD invasion, and the light-brown apple moth, another invasive insect, only impacts portions of the Santa Cruz and Monterey County raspberry production areas at present. The light-brown apple moth can also be effectively controlled more inexpensively with the organic microbial insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis Berliner. Therefore, we can infer that the majority of the observed insecticide applications included in this analysis were intended to control SWD populations. We also consider the additional labor costs associated with managing SWD in order to develop a comprehensive estimate of SWD management costs. Like many other horticultural products, raspberries are extremely labor-intensive to produce. Labor, the primary production cost, includes planting, pruning, weeding, spraying, hauling, cleanup, field sanitation, and harvesting.SWD control programs necessitate labor-intensive management practices in addition to chemical applications. Three labor-intensive control activities are currently used to reduce SWD-related yield losses: increasing the frequency of harvests, performing field sanitation, and implementing trapping programs to detect the presence of SWD populations.Further compounding these direct labor costs, the productivity of harvesting labor decreases as more frequent harvests and fruit losses due to SWD reduce the availability of marketable fruit to pick. Labor-intensive management activities are more intensely utilized by organic producers due to the lack of efficacious organic chemicals.

Howells perceives Ambrosio as “powerless to escape from his guilt-ridden obsession” and “caught up in a web of guilt-ridden erotic fantasy.”Peter Brooks claims that Lewis builds a fictional world driven by “forces which are both beyond man’s control and yet inhabiting within man, as they inhabit within nature.”These scholars and others appear to be showing their own dominance over Lewis by exposing his manipulations, but they are accepting the idea that he allows no autonomy for his characters, similar to how we saw that scholars bridled under and submitted to the novel’s tendency toward objectification. By suspiciously reinforcing the existence of absolute control in the novel, scholars overlook the text’s evidence of culpability and possibility. The scholars quoted above insist that Ambrosio is powerless within the narrative despite the fact that he ruins or destroys many lives. Stephen Ahern takes issue with this kind of reading, arguing that “the narrative leaves plenty of room for individual agency.”He explains that “the monk’s actions cannot be excused as the product of passions beyond his control” because it is Ambrosio’s “willful blindness” that dooms him and his moments of uncertainty or regret that had the potential to save him.Lewis dramatizes Ambrosio’s paralyzing choices and missed opportunities throughout the novel. And yet it is true that Ambrosio also feels compelled. Ahern explains this apparent contradiction with the argument that Lewis is exposing the cruel delusion implicit in the rhetoric of sentimental love. However,hydroponic nft the rhetoric of desire is only one manifestation of a more pervasive verbal phenomenon in The Monk.

In this section, I will consider how the novel uses a rhetoric of necessity with which characters attempt to order each other’s present and future, and sometimes even past. These characters constantly recontextualize the situation they inhabit, attempting to reorient each other toward a perception of the possibilities and impossibilities that serve them in the moment. After close-reading how they do this, I will suggest that it can provide a model for recontextualizing our own situation as literary critics writing about sensational novels under the current scholarly constraints. As Napier and several characters in the text point out, the refusal of mercy is the primary sin in the novel.Yet Lewis does not portray his repeated scenes of desperation only as ones in which a powerless person begs for compassion from a hard-hearted and powerful one. In each of these scenes, though one character clearly has more power in the situation and the less powerful character can only ask for mercy, the way that character often does so is by striving for control of the more powerful character’s movements, thoughts, and feelings and by claiming the power to narrate events. Kilgour refers to Lucifer, the most influential character, as the “infernal author Satan,” but many characters appear to be struggling for authorial control.By looking closely at four of the scenes in which one character has the choice to act either maliciously or forbearingly, I will show that in these crucial moments of decision, both characters repeatedly use grammatical features like verbtense or mood to deploy power. In these exchanges, each one verbally conveys that there is no possibility for choice, even as their competing necessities and inevitabilities demonstrate that there is.

The first of these scenes of contestation occurs early in the novel, when Ambrosio finds Agnes’s letter from Raymond planning her escape from the convent and, refusing her pleas for mercy, turns the pregnant nun over to the domina to be punished. This summary implies that Ambrosio holds all the power in the situation, but the scene allows for more complexity. Napier and Ahern have identified Ambrosio’s pitilessness and subsequent regret in this scene as formative for his character, and many other scholars have likely overlooked it because of Agnes’s theatrical and sentimental emotional displays , but closer attention to the verbal exchange between Agnes and Ambrosio reveals the two to be engaged in a struggle for control of the perception of their situation. In this and other scenes, modal auxiliaries suggest whether a future course of action is possible, likely, necessary, inevitable, or recommended. We might expect an ethical negotiation like this one to feature several instances of could, may, might, should, and would, but here and elsewhere Lewis largely refrains from using these modal verbs and prefers must, shall, and will, making characters speak as if the future is already written while they argue over what that future will be. Another important aspect of this and other such scenes is Lewis’s reliance on the imperative mood. Imperatives can be interpreted as pleas, requests, and suggestions, but they always take the form of a command, which, along with the extent to which Agnes seizes control of narrating the future in this scene, makes her appear to have a great deal of autonomy even as, practically, she has none. Early in their exchange, Agnes sounds as if she possesses more power than Ambrosio. Ambrosio uses the modal auxiliary must to present his own choice as being out of his hands. Against Agnes’s objections, he announces, “I must read this letter” and “This letter must to the prioress.” He defers to authority to decide his behavior, as if his future actions have already been dictated by the rules of the Church. He uses few imperatives, and only physical ones like “stay” and “hold.”

Agnes also uses physical imperatives , but she additionally demands his attention and tells him to “think” and most frequently to feel, demanding that he take pity on her.Though Agnes is imploring, she is also commanding him to feel and act in a certain way and asserting her own idea of the future: “Father, compassionate my youth! Look with indulgence on a woman’s weakness, and deign to conceal my frailty! The remainder of my life shall be employed in expiating this single fault, and your lenity will bring back a soul to heaven!”Her use of the modal verbs shall and will rather than the more pleading could suggests that the situation has already been resolved in her favor and the fate she describes is a certainty rather than being reliant on Ambrosio’s unlikely mercy. As Agnes claims narrative control, Ambrosio resists. He uses rhetorical questions to demonstrate his imperviousness to her demands for compassion, responding in a manner intended to shut down dialogue and distort her version of the future to reflect his own perspective: “What! shall St Clare’s convent become the retreat of prostitutes? Shall I suffer the church of Christ to cherish in its bosom debauchery and shame?”Whereas Agnes used shall in the sense of will to denote necessity in her version of the future, Ambrosio uses shall in the sense of ought to reframe her necessary future as her ridiculous misconception of what is appropriate. Agnes responds by redoubling her imperatives for Ambrosio to heed her and take pity on her and her unborn child and then assures him, “If you discover my imprudence to the domina, both of us are lost,” using the form of a factual conditional statement to represent the deadly consequence of his intended action for her and her baby as a fact so incontrovertible and emergent it deserves the present tense.He again deflects with a scornful rhetorical question and counters with his own narrative of the future: “Shall I conceal your crime—I whom you have deceived by your false confession?—No, daughter, no. I will render you a more essential service. I will rescue you from perdition, in spite of yourself. Penance and mortification shall expiate your offence,hydroponic channel and severity force you back to the path of holiness.”His emphasized first-person pronoun repossesses his agency from Agnes, and he reasserts his control of his future and hers, characterizing himself as a holy hero in a narrative of her salvation. As Agnes is about to be carried away, she has lost the ability to affect her fate, but retains the ability to affect Ambrosio’s sense of what has happened. She reclaims their narrative, recasting the present and future as the fatal past: “You could have saved me; you could have restored me to happiness and virtue; but would not; you are the destroyer of my soul; you are my murderer, and on you fall the curse of my death and my unborn infant’s!”She rejects his formulations in which he either has no choice or acts heroically, retelling their story as one in which he is clearly at fault, substituting could and would for his must and will.

She then predicts a future in which he will be punished by God for his cruelty and delivers her final command to him, that when that time comes, he “think upon Agnes, and despair of pardon.”Her words wound Ambrosio, as he suffers “[a] secret pang at his heart,” and Matilda soon gives him reason to shout in torment, “Agnes! Agnes! . . . I already feel thy curse!”The second scene I’ll consider is the one where Matilda reveals herself as a woman and convinces Ambrosio not to report her, and it is the only one in the novel in which a supplicant obtains mercy. Süner and other scholars have focused on the sensational moment when Matilda exposes her breast and Ambrosio becomes paralyzed by lustful indecision, but before this moment there are many others in which their power struggle is more verbal than physical. Max Fincher argues that Matilda’s rhetorical effectiveness in this scene is the first example in the novel of the recurring figure of the woman who verbally dominates men.When examining her rhetoric, though, we can see that it is very similar to Agnes’s from the previous scene and to Ambrosio’s own—the main difference is that she gives no ground in their verbal competition for control over the narrative. Matilda uses imperatives at least eighteen times in the scene, covering a full range of orders, including the physical , attentional , intellectual , and emotional .Meanwhile, Ambrosio, shaken, gives no commands for some pages, deferring to authority that he claims forecloses his ability to veer from the course of action that is dictated by the Church. He tells her, “I feel that duty obliges my treating you with harshness; I must reject your prayer . . . the laws of our order forbid your stay . . . my vows will oblige me to declare your story to the community. You must from hence.”He maintains that the Church has already decided his future actions, but he also shows discomfort with his cruel choice by tempering his certainty somewhat and disclaiming his responsibility further by making duty, vows, and religious laws the subjects of his statements. Matilda verbally outmatches Ambrosio at every turn. As Ambrosio softens his resolve, he also softens the rebuking rhetorical questions he used to resist Agnes’s vision of the future, now sounding equally searching and disapproving: “can you really hope for my permission to remain among us? Even if I were to grant your request, what good could you derive from it?”His use of the subjunctive mood still suggests that it would be impossible for him to allow her to stay, but he seems both curious and concerned, lacking the contempt he demonstrated in his questions to Agnes. Matilda, in contrast, transitions easily from a rhetorical question freighted with criticism to an accusatory dismissal of his stated intentions to a vivid evocation of her preferred future and a declaration of virtuous love: “Can you be less generous than I thought you? I will not suspect it. You will not drive a wretch to despair; I shall still be permitted to see you . . . and, when we expire, our bodies shall rest in the same grave.”When Ambrosio attempts to harden his resolve, she threatens to kill herself, and her physical threat is made more credible by the present tense: “the moment that you leave me, I plunge this steel into my heart”; “Tell me that you will conceal my story; that I shall remain your friend and your companion, or this poniard drinks my blood.”88 In her attempts to gain control of the situation, Matilda reaches extremes that Agnes and Ambrosio do not, but her verbal techniques are only an amplification of theirs, not a display of aberrant feminine power. The third of these scenes, in which Ambrosio rapes Antonia, has drawn scholarly attention for the horrific way Lewis portrays the rape, but the scene is also significant in showing Antonia’s comparative rhetorical weakness and, notably, Lewis’s suppression of most of her speech.

In Wolfenbach’s case, these responses tend to be ironic or disdainful. Even when scholars and publishers recover a novel, they often suggest it is important but not good, or that it is important only because others have dismissed it. The Castle of Wolfenbach went out of print after its 1968 publication as part of The Northanger Set of Jane Austen’s Horrid Novels, but after Rictor Norton included an excerpt of it in his 2000 book Gothic Readings, fringe publishers began to show renewed interest in Parsons’s novel. Norton introduces the excerpt with some details of Parsons’s tragic life, a description of her novels as derivate of Radcliffe’s, and a quotation from one of the novel’s early reviews that complains about its unmet expectations.Even this lukewarmreintroduction of Wolfenbach could have caught the attention of publishers and scholars who work with culturally devalued fiction. In 2003 Wildside Press, which produces mostly science fiction and is thus experienced in dealing with literature of precarious cultural value, published an edition without an introduction that is now out of print. In 2006, Valancourt Books, whose mission is to recover neglected fiction, released an inexpensive paperback with a scholarly introduction by Hoeveler, followed by a reprint in 2007 and ebook in 2009, as part of an effort to republish all of the Horrid Novels with scholarly introductions. Today, electronic versions are readily accessible, including one with a lengthy scholarly introduction by The Northanger Library Project, whose purpose is also the recuperation of dismissed fiction. These publications, like recent scholarly work on the other Horrid Novels,blueberry packaging attempt to reassess these works with the assumption that previous recovery workers were still too hasty to judge.

Yet, by continuing to assert Wolfenbach’s importance only as a novel mentioned by Jane Austen or as a novel that has been neglected, publishers and scholars spread awareness of the novel while disseminating what is likely only an ambivalent interest in it. Similarly, Wolfenbach’s scholarly recuperation as a “female gothic” novel makes interest in the novel conditional on the way it is perceived to be working in the Radcliffean mode and the extent to which it alters Radcliffe’s prototype in its depiction of female oppression. Scholars reading Wolfenbach through a female gothic lens have pointed out that Parsons, unlike Radcliffe, makes violence against women gruesomely apparent in the text, but they do so by marking this difference as a single variation in an otherwise typical imitation. Angela Wright prefaces her claim about this explicit violence with “Where Parsons deviates from the Radcliffean model, however,” and Sue Chaplin argues that Parsons’s plots are “very much in the Radcliffean mould, but what distinguishes Parsons from her predecessor” is the graphic nature of the descriptions.Karen Morton instead argues that Parsons’s gothic novels resist Radcliffe’s model, in part by portraying more realistic characters and situations, but even this argument necessitates constant comparison to Radcliffe, making interest in Parsons contingent on her relationship to a more well-regarded novelist.This contingent interest, with its attendant valuation of particularity, can help reveal the distance between the investments of a novel like The Castle of Wolfenbach and the investments of critics today. The cultural trend of recovering, reassessing, and revaluing popular older novels by women has not generally led scholars to argue that Wolfenbach is effectively written or complex. It is still extremely rare for them to approach Wolfenbach as anything but one of the Horrid Novels, for which it receives passing mention. As E. J. Clery writes, novels like Wolfenbach seem “already read” because they are formulaic.

The fact that Wolfenbach and other early gothic novels were plentiful, formulaic, and sensational has served historically as justification for describing them as indistinguishable media for feeling, rarely worthy of close, particular attention. By and large, scholars seem to pass the novel over as one among many of its kind, with nothing interesting to offer. Hoeveler represents many scholars’ attitude toward Wolfenbach well in statement that I quoted at the beginning of this chapter: “I would not claim it is a great novel. Instead, I see it as a historical document that speaks to us about the fears, beliefs, and prejudices of its era. As such it is an interesting text to study in relation to other gothic, sentimental, and melodramatic works of the 1790s.”Hoeveler’s tentative assertion that the novel is interesting perfectly illustrates Sianne Ngai’s argument that the word interesting offers a compromise in the conflict over whether a critic’s role should be to judge works aesthetically or dispense with aesthetic judgments entirely. Ngai writes that interesting “keeps the possibility alive that a critic might actually continue the task of influencing public judgment, if only in the modest way of suggesting that some texts are more worth paying attention to than others and then supplying reasons why.”In this way, as Ngai explains, there is “a deeply pedagogical dimension to the interesting,” as venturing this assessment often requires the critic to inform her audience and engage in a discussion with the intention of not only convincing but also illuminating.In contrast to aesthetic judgments that purport to be instantaneous, final, and universal , Ngai argues that interesting entails consideration and reconsideration, as it assumes an always-shifting point of personal knowledge. A work of art can be bad but still worthy of lengthy attention, Ngai explains, because it offers information the audience does not yet have. However, the affective dimensions of interesting complicate its usefulness as a way to reassess works like Wolfenbach.

Ngai describes interest as both affective and conceptual, a mostly detached engagement, and one that can easily tip into boredom or frustration. Gothic novels like Wolfenbach have been framed as intense emotional experiences, with an “already read” derivative quality. A reader expecting an intense emotional experience will likely find cold comfort in mere interest, and a reader predisposed to see only formula will be unlikely to search very hard for novelty. Scholars have a lot of incentive to find a book like Wolfenbach interesting, so they may be frustrated by the effort it takes, finding that a strenuous attempt to be interested yields only the rather unsatisfying option of being interested for the sake of the novel’s role in history alone, or that it requires a laborious reframing of the terms on which we judge the novel. I sidestep both of these endeavors in this chapter by attempting to occupy Wolfenbach’s world and our own critical climate at the same time, in order to illuminate the novel’s cultural investments and set them against our own. The differences among Wolfenbach’s values and our own seem too numerous to catalogue, but we have already seen the most important ones emerge in recent negative assessments of Parsons’s prescriptive morality, universality, and conventionality, which highlight our own beliefs in relativism, specificity, and individuality. According to Ngai, people are interested when they do not know something, while for Parsons, interest may involve not knowing, but it is also often determined by whether something fits into known categories. Ngai’s interest is individual and particular, always changing based on a given person’s knowledge at the time, and ambivalent in its emotional engagement, while Parsons’s is normative and unquestionably emotionally involved. These differences make it appear as though Parsons’s school of affliction is the only rigidly prescriptive one, but we have seen that what appear to be independent assessmentsof a novel like Wolfenbach actually look more like emotional rules that are passed down over time when considered together. Even a scholar like Ngai, who seems to be an independent auditor of the kinds of critics who establish emotional rules, inhabits an affective school in which she participates in the lessons. As she elaborates on the semiotics of interesting,blueberry packaging box what is for the most part a descriptive argument becomes sometimes indistinguishable from a prescriptive one. After using the definitions of authorities to break interesting into its components, like time and novelty, she then turns to examples and presents them as situations in which the particular combination of components means that there is only one appropriate response or range of responses. For example, when describing Ed Ruscha’s books of photographs of ordinary subjects , she writes, “Given the banality of the subject matter and the calculated distances at which the examples of each type were photographed , these generic-looking compilations were clearly engineered to keep affect on a low burner, generating at most tiny flickers of interest.”By linking the response to the objective components of interesting/boring that she has already established and to the artist’s intention and even the construction of the art, she excludes any possibility for meaningful variation in response, as if any such variations would be incorrect. Within a critical culture shaped by implicit affective rules like these, a reader who broadcasts her sympathetic response to a novel like Wolfenbach risks being judged as unsophisticated or self-righteous. I hope I escape both of these judgments by arguing that a sympathetic response to Wolfenbach, like my own, is not entirely different from the aforementioned critical responses. While scholars privilege educated and difficult reading experiences, in the case of eighteenth-century formulaic gothic fiction that abounds with tales of distress, it takes as much effort, cultivation of a specific taste, and resistance to the dominant critical attitude to become absorbed in the novel in a way similar to what lay readers in the 1790s might have when they made Wolfenbach and other circulating-library fiction popular.

When I read Wolfenbach for the first time, I read it with a taste for melodrama and sentiment honed by years of reading early eighteenth-century British amatory fiction, midcentury novels of sensibility, and early gothic novels, as well as American emotional literature, from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Twilight. This reading practice and preference allowed me to immerse myself in the story and experience sometimes wrenching agony at the characters’ woes, especially when those woes were ones I could not bear to imagine experiencing. I also read Wolfenbach for the first time on an e-reader, like many of amateur critics note that they did, and even this new medium could have hugely affected the way I approached the novel, as scholars are beginning to consider.Even so, as a reader aware of the critical conversation about novels like Wolfenbach, I was continually conscious of how I ought to judge its formulaic qualities, and it took considerable effort to remain engaged in the story. In this way, some experiences of absorption in bad writing can be as difficult as some experiences of scholarly distance, just as some dismissive critical judgments of it can be as easy as some uncritical acceptance. The way in which our critical judgments of emotion conform to cultural standards is difficult to see because, like good students, we have internalized these standards. Parsons’s school of affliction is only visible to us in the aspects that differ from our own beliefs and conventions. Likewise, our school of critical emotion is most visible in these differences. We have our own rules that dictate the proper way to express suffering in fiction, but they are most apparent when they are broken by “horrid” fiction like Wolfenbach. We have learned a very limited number of ways we are supposed to respond emotionally to bad fiction as critics, but these limitations only feel constricting when we see the force of the critical tradition that upholds them. Our emotional conventions change greatly over time, but in any given cultural moment they have the doctrinal solidity of a schoolhouse, and only when we recognize that other people in other times and places occupied different schools can we have the option of stepping outside our own. The novel’s salacious sensationalism made it infamous after its publication in 1796, especially once the public knew that the author was Matthew Lewis, a young member of Parliament. But as we can see, the deviant brutality and pleasure that Coleridge denounces in 1797 becomes, for King in 2002, the explosive material of a swaggering rebel, something only the most uptight readers would shun. Even as early as 1957, Devendra Varma would reflect on the scandalized early reception of the novel, “To us it seems ineffably puerile that anyone could be disturbed by these mild erotics. But, immediately, the prigs and prudes rose up.”Today, The Monk’s transgressive subjects and stylistic power make it laudable, in contrast to Eliza Parsons’s “horrid” Castle of Wolfenbach from my previous chapter.

As Lang points out, her method “involves reading these responses as texts in themselves,” which is necessarily biased by her own perspective.Like Lang, I make no claims to objectivity, but I attempt to be a thoughtful reader of others’ responses. Lang, in the article mentioned above, calls attention to a scholarly tendency toward “obfuscation”: “Conventions of referring to one’s own idiosyncratic interpretation as that of “the reader”—a convenient fiction—are normative within literary criticism, and their effects in obscuring the way interpretative differences flow from differences in the subject position, geographical location and educational training of readers are rarely remarked on.”This convention includes not only “the reader” but also “we” and any subjective judgment stated as objective fact. Felski writes that though many scholars look askance at the idea of objectivity, “these same critics adopt a stance of what we can call ‘procedural objectivity’ that screens out any flicker of emotion, tamps down idiosyncratic impulses, and steers away from the first-person voice.”This practice becomes especially noticeable when scholars use it to represent their own emotions about a text. For instance, in her introduction to The Castle of Otranto, E. J. Clery asserts that the long-suffering Hippolita’s circumstances are “never so affecting” as the ones of comparable characters from other works.Similarly, Napier writes that “we are virtually prevented from developing anything more than a programmed response to stock Gothic situations.”

Though it is a scholarly norm to generalize from one’s own reaction and expertise,nursery grow bag these kinds of statements imply that readers who feel differently are feeling incorrectly. Lynne Pearce, in Feminism and the Politics of Reading, provides an alternative to this scholarly way of writing about feeling by including alongside her scholarly analysis the responses of readers in feminist reading communities and extracts from her own diary-like accounts of first experiencing, remembering, and reexperiencing the texts she analyzes. She uses these more overtly affective responses to illustrate what she calls “implicated” reading—a relationship with the text that is as dynamic and complex as a relationship between lovers, including not only “ravissement” but also feelings like disappointment. She sets this kind of textual engagement against the professional hermeneutical reading that can be comfortably performed by feminist scholars. Her opposition of implicated reading and hermeneutical reading demonstrates the “massive discomfort of those of us who, as feminist readers, regularly ‘commute’ between these two discourses/models of reading.”In one of her “meta-commentaries” on her reading experience, she draws attention to the way her feminist interpretive practice “constitutes an obstacle to a more personalized and emotionally engaged one” even as she recognizes her theoretical objection to the idea that politics and emotions are separate spheres.What she concludes is that the close engagement of implicated reading cannot be performed simultaneously with the distanced practices of contextualizing and interpreting.

My own reading practice, which informs the structure and method of my dissertation, often toggles between these two modes or even employs them simultaneously. My initial readings of the novels I discuss in these chapters were deeply implicated—I felt anxious for the characters, I cried over the portrayals of grief—but most of the time my critical faculties remained engaged as well, as an internal voice that noted distracting repetition or sexism or narrative techniques, like watching a film with a director’s commentary running. It is possible that my reading experience is unusual, the unconventional product of my lifelong empathetic enjoyment of sentimental and sensational fiction; my training and practice as a fiction writer and a copy editor; and my education in eighteenth-century literature, feminism, and emotion studies. Though I have been inculcated with the mood of scholarly suspicion that Felski describes, it is also mixed with many other moods when I read, reread, and write about texts. My initial orientation toward the criticism I analyze in my dissertation was thus adversarial: I was angry that amateur critics write violently about a character I had identified with; I was frustrated that scholars assert the impossibility of feeling what I did in fact feel. But in the process of attempting to understand these critical responses, I was able to acknowledge them as being equally valid as my own, the products of different orientations, practices, knowledges, and perceptions. It is these differences, and what they can tell us about engagements with literature, that energize my dissertation. In my first chapter, I investigate what is “bad” about The Castle of Wolfenbach , by Eliza Parsons.

Tepidly received by its contemporary critics, this sentimental gothic novel was nonetheless popular, in part because it was one of the works published by Minerva Press, which catered to the taste for formulaic gothic fiction in the 1790s. Minerva was the target of critical anxiety about popular novels and their readers, which is likely why Jane Austen included several by this publisher in her list of “horrid” novels that a young woman passes along as a recommendation in Northanger Abbey. Because of Wolfenbach’s association with Minerva and the Northanger Horrid Novels, scholars have tended to approach the novel as one among many of an emotional type, uninteresting in itself. Employing eighteenth-century ideas about feeling, Parsons portrays and enacts a kind of emotional instruction that teaches characters and readers to respond appropriately to types of suffering without needing to know the particulars of the distressing circumstances. The methods Parsons uses to teach a way of “feeling with the formula”—didactic moralizing, conventional characters and situations, and sparse detail— become, for amateur critics today, evidence of the novel’s poor literary quality. These amateurs, in turn, model ways of feeling against the formula, reducing Wolfenbach to its conventions in order to channel contempt into amusement, for example by counting the number of times characters burst into tears and categorizing the novel as one that is “so bad it’s good.” In contrast, Sianne Ngai’s description of scholarly interest appears to offer a way of suspending critical dismissal, but in practice it also closes down responses by limiting acceptable ways to feel. By comparing the way Parsons and different forms of criticism school emotional response, I attempt to make the institutional qualities of our affective judgments of “bad” fiction more apparent, which can allow us to resist our own emotional training. My second chapter, on Matthew Lewis’s 1796 novel, The Monk, uses Daniel Gross’s “uncomfortable situations” and Rita Felski’s suspicious critical mood to further consider the emotional constraints of criticism.In contrast to Wolfenbach, The Monk has met a better reception in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries than it did when it scandalized early critics. But it has also been the subject of two very different marketing strategies during this time—one to abstract it from its sensationalism and the other to rebrand its sensationalism for modern fans of genre fiction. This tension in its publication history mirrors a tension in its scholarly reception, in which many scholars avoid discussing the novel’s emotional features or dismiss them as falsely sentimental. Meanwhile, scholars who address its graphic violence and rape and its aestheticized lust in detail follow conventions of feminist analysis or close reading that end up sounding awkwardly similar to amateur responses that praise the novel’s misogyny or prurience. Seeking a method for writing about the novel’s feeling that avoids these critical traps, I turn to its illustrations, which allow a different approach to the novel’s affective power dynamics and lead me to analyze the rhetorical struggles in its scenes of distress. In this chapter, analyzing the novel’s paratexts enables me to reconsider its critical history and access a set of responses that the dominant scholarly discourse has minimized,plastic growing bag freeing up further possibilities for scholarly analysis that resist current academic strictures.

The problem of analyzing sentimentality in The Monk remains difficult in our current academic context, but in my third chapter, I propose a way of exploring the particular features of Ann Radcliffe’s sentimental interactions in The Mysteries of Udolphoand tracing responses to them through the word sweet. Transitioning from my consideration of formal and stylistic emotion of the first two chapters, I narrow my focus in this chapter to a single word to begin an exploration of how the smallest textual features can affect readers. I use the term “emotional taste” to describe how beliefs become embedded in diction through cultural associations and how these value-inflected keywords can contribute to different strong responses among particular groups of readers. To illustrate this idea, I closely analyze how the word sweet, which Radcliffe uses 131 times in Udolpho, creates an intratextual association with feminine emotional receptivity and influence. This association, combined with certain literary and historical associations with sweetness, could help explain why, for instance, some female amateur reviewers today respond to Radcliffe’s sweetest character with violent frustration. It could also shed light on the better modern reputation of Radcliffe’s Italian, which cloaks feminine receptive sweetness with emotional impermeability. I close the dissertation with an investigation that includes speculation about how critical feeling could hinge on even the smallest typographical feature of a text. In my final chapter, I discuss how The Castle of Otranto , by Horace Walpole, has puzzled readers for centuries, provoking ambivalent assessments about its literary quality that depend in large part on whether Walpole meant the novel to be comic or tragic. In reflecting on these mixed responses, I show how critics appear to seek a correct affective response by speculating about Walpole’s intentions and how Walpole’s inclusion in Susan Sontag’s definition of camp seems to confirm beliefs that the novel is meant for the amusement of an in-crowd. However, Walpole’s own framing of the novel is more ambiguous, as is his tone in the novel itself. Compounding this indeterminacy is the fact that different editions of the novel format and punctuate dialogue differently—minor changes that could have a huge effect on how readers interact with the text, as I demonstrate through amateur critics’ discussion of dialogue format and scholars’ quotations of speech with exclamation points. Though minuscule, exclamation points in particular carry divergent affective associations through their literary history, and the way editors preserve or amend them in certain scenes can change the tone of the scene significantly. Since neither Walpole’s statements about the novel nor the text itself provide a clear emotional directive that resolves the affective uncertainties of critics, I consider whether it is possible to approach the novel in a way that discards the idea of a correct emotional response in favor of careful attention, curiosity, and receptivity. The ultimate goal of my dissertation is not to assert my own new and better interpretations of texts or to argue that professional or nonprofessional critics should feel differently about these novels. I would like instead to demonstrate the way all critical emotion is limited by critics’ situations and to consider what those limited emotional judgments do, especially when they have the power to shape the discourse on a novel, as those of prominent critics can. Despite my own limitations, I hope to offer a broad enough range of approaches to suggest that there are many more possible directions to move in than the ones literary scholars most often choose. Even as I find myself leaning on many of the traditional academic techniques for writing with and about emotion, I am feeling around for a better way. As these selections suggest, the reception of Eliza Parsons’s gothic novel The Castle of Wolfenbachhas been remarkably static, changing very little over more than two hundred years. These tepid responses temper expressions of enjoyment with judgments of quality, and rather than dismissing the novel outright, the professional critics concede that it possesses the bare minimum of “interest” necessary to recommend it. The word interesting has different implications in these different critical contexts, which I will discusslater, but the professional assessments of the novel’s importance and ability to involve readers, as well as the blogger’s statement that it is enjoyable but forgettable, all mark the novel as only somewhat worthwhile material for reading or studying. The similarity of these critics’ assessments over time might suggest that the novel is of objectively middling quality, since critics with extremely different training judge it similarly across time. However, I will argue that the relative constancy of critical judgment has less to do with quality and more to do with the way Wolfenbach comes to readers already classified as a certain kind of derivative, emotional novel and the manner in which this classification has been passed down for generations. This is not to say that the novel is actually good but misunderstood—in fact, I agree that the novel is formulaic and melodramatic.

Our analyses show that false positive and ‘of-target’ GWAS signals that arise because of erroneous physical addresses can typically be identified and rectified by fitting DNA markers associated with causal loci as fixed effects, which is effectively equivalent to fitting a multilocus genetic model in a QTL mapping or candidate gene analysis study using mixed linear models . A preponderance of the erroneous physical addresses are typically going to be found on homoeologous chromosomes, as was the case in our study, and hence could be misconstrued as signals associated with the effects of homoeologous loci.The sheer numerical abundance of sources of resistance to Fusarium wilt race 1 in strawberry did not shed light on the diversity of R-genes that they might carry, if any,or genetic mechanisms underlying resistance . Was resistance to race 1 conferred by dominant R-genes? How many unique Fusarium wilt R-genes exist in wild and domesticated populations of strawberry? To explore these questions, we developed and undertook genetic analyses of S1 populations developed by self-pollinating highly resistant F. × ananassa heirloom cultivars and individuals and full-sib populations developed by crossing highly resistant ecotypes of F. chiloensis subsp. chiloensis , F. virginiana subsp. virginiana , and F. virginiana subsp. grayana with a highly susceptible F. × ananassa individual .

The phenotypes of of spring in each of the segregating populations spanned the entire range from highly resistant to highly susceptible with bimodal distributions . When individuals within each population were classified as resistant or susceptible using 2.0 as the cut of on the disease symptom rating scale,plastic planters the observed phenotypic ratios perfectly ft the expected phenotypic ratios for the segregation of dominant resistance genes . The Guardian and Wiltguard S1 and 12C089P002 × PI602575 and PI552277 × 12C089P002 full-sib populations each appeared to segregate for a single dominant resistance gene, whereas the Earliglow and 17C327P010 S1 populations appeared to segregate for two dominant genes with duplicate epistasis, where a single dominant allele at either locus was sufficient to confer resistance . The statistical inferences were not affected by shifting the cut of downward to 1.5 or upward to 2.5; hence, we concluded that dominant R-genes segregated in these populations .Genome-wide searches for SNPs associated with loci segregating for resistance to Fusarium wilt uncovered a single tightly linked cluster of statistically significant SNP markers in each population . The SNPs most strongly associated with differences in resistance phenotypes were tightly linked to partially to completely dominant R-genes that segregated in these populations and mapped to three non-homoeologous chromosomes . The putative R-genes are hereafter designated FW2 , FW3 , FW4 , and FW5 . FW2 and FW5 genetically mapped proximal to FW1 on chromosome 2B . The effects and positions of the these loci were identified by GWAS or genetic mapping alone .

The SNP markers most strongly associated with each of these loci were different and spanned a 1.6 Mb haploblock . To explore the structure of this haploblock in greater depth, we imputed and phased the haplotypes for 71 50K Axiom array-genotyped SNPs among 653 individuals in the California population . These included the parents and more distant relatives and common ancestors of the S1 and full-sib progeny that were both genotyped and phenotyped . Although FW1, FW2, and FW5 could be alleles, haplotypes for 71 SNPs within the haploblock predicted to harbor these loci were insufficient to rule out paralogs, and confidence intervals for the estimated positions of these loci spanned the gene-rich haploblock . The SNP haplotypes for Fronteras and Portola were identical except for three consecutive SNPs in a short haploblock slightly downstream of the location predicted to harbor FW1 . The haplotype associated with the dominant FW1 allele for that haploblock was ascertained from the genotypes of Fronteras and Portola . The haplotypes observed for the other resistant parents difered from each other and Fronteras and Portola; hence, from SNP haplotypes and approximate physical positions, we could not unequivocally show that the putative R-genes associated with these phenotypically mapped loci were allelic. Finally, the KASP assays we developed for informative SNPs associated with these loci were not cross predictive . The paralog hypothesis seems plausible for the underlying R-genes; however, our data were in sufficient to rule out the single locus, multiple allele hypothesis. Although additional studies are needed to resolve this question, the classes of R-genes hypothesized to underlie these loci are commonly found in tandemly duplicated clusters in plants .

The genotypic means, effects, and PVE estimates for SNP markers tightly linked with FW2 and FW5 were nearly identical to estimates for SNP markers associated with FW1 in the Fronteras and Portola S1 populations . FW2 was nearly completely dominant . The additive and dominance effects of the FW2 locus were 1.5- to 1.9- fold greater than those reported for the FW1 locus, partly because unfavorable allele homozygotes were more strongly susceptible in the Guardian S1 population than in the Fronteras and Portola S1 populations. The estimated marginal means for favorable allele homozygotes ranged from 1.07 to 1.25 in the three populations . The EMM for resistant homozygotes was ̄yAA = 1.1, whereas the EMM for susceptible homozygotes was ̄yaa = 4.5. We could not estimate the degree of dominance for FW5 because the AA homozygote was not observed in the fullsib population; however, the EMM for the heterozygote was 1.06, which implies that the FW5 allele might be completely dominant. Although the statistical evidence for the segregation of a single dominant R-gene on chromosome 1A was strong in the Wiltguard S1 population, the effects of SNPs associated with FW3 were weaker than those associated with FW1, FW2, and FW5 on chromosome 2B . The most significant FW3-associated SNP was AX-123363542 , which only explained 23% of the phenotypic variation for resistance to race 1. Despite this, the EMM for FW3 homozygotes was only slightly greater than the EMMs for FW1 and FW2 homozygotes . Although the PVE estimate was greater for FW4 than FW3 , the EMMs for SNP marker heterozygotes were virtually identical: 1.76 for FW3 and 1.69 for FW4; hence, FW4 appears to be as strong as FW3 .With the genomic locations of FW1, FW2, and FW5 narrowed to a short haploblock on chromosome 2B , we searched annotations in the ‘Royal Royce’ reference genome to identify genes encoding proteins known to play an important role in race-specific disease resistance via pathogen recognition and activation of defense responses, e.g., pathogen-associated molecular pattern -triggered immunity or effector triggered immunity . Eight of 1,208 annotated genes found in the 0.0-5.0 Mb haploblock on chromosome 2B encode proteins with known R-gene domains and functions . These included one coiled-coil domain NLR encoding gene and two tightly linked Tollinterleukin 1 receptor domain type NLR encoding genes . Hence, the most promising candidate genes for FW1 encode NLR proteins. The approximate 95% Bayes confdence interval for the genomic location of FW4 on chromosome 6B was fairly wide and consequently harbored 197 annotated genes in the ‘Royal Royce’ reference genome . Nine of these 197 annotated genes are predicted to encode R-proteins that mediate gene-for-gene resistance in plants . These included multiple NBS-LRR R-proteins . Finally,plastic nursery plant pot the approximate 95% Bayes confdence interval for the genomic location of FW3 on chromosome 1A was slightly wider than that observed for the other mapped loci because the effect of the locus was weaker. There were 535 annotated genes within that interval, of which seven were predicted to encode NLR or other R-proteins . This was the locus with the weakest support for the segregation of a race-specific R-gene; however, as noted earlier, homozygous resistant of spring in the Wiltguard S1 population were highly resistant . Hence, even if FW3 does not encode a race-specific R-protein, this locus merits further study, in part because the favorable allele can be deployed and pyramided to increase the durability of resistance to Fusarium wilt.To accelerate the introduction and selection of Fusarium wilt resistance genes in breeding programs, we developed a collection of high-throughput Kompetitive Allele Specifc PCR markers for SNPs in linkage disequilibrium with FW1–FW5 . Collectively, 25 KASP markers were designed for the five loci using PolyOligo 1.0 .

The genotypic clusters for 17 of these were codominant , co-segregated with the predicted resistance loci, and were robust and reliable when tested on diverse germplasm accessions . For each target locus, at least one KASP-SNP marker had a prediction accuracy in the 98-100% range when tested in the original populations where they were discovered . To further gauge their accuracy when applied in diverse germplasm, they were genotyped on 78 California and 66 non-California individuals, mostly cultivars . Because the causal genes and mutations underlying FW1–FW5 are not known, the SNPs we targeted are highly population-specific . They are strongly predictive when applied in populations where specific genes are known to be segregating and moderately predictive when assayed among random samples of individuals because of recombination between the SNP markers and unknown causal mutations.The deployment of Fusarium wilt resistant cultivars has become critical in California since the early 2000s when outbreaks of the disease were first reported . This disease has rapidly spread and become one of the most common biotic causes of plant death and yield losses in California, the source of 88-91% of the strawberries produced in the US . The scope of the problem was initially unclear, as were the solutions, because the resistance phenotypes of commercially important cultivars, genetic mechanisms underlying resistance, and distribution and race structure of the pathogen were either unknown or uncertain when the disease unexpectedly surfaced in California . A breeding solution instantly emerged with the discovery of FW1 , and was further strengthened with the discovery of additional homologous and non-homoeologous resistance genes in the present study . Genetic and physical mapping of these race-specific R-genes has enabled the rapid development and deployment of Fusarium wilt resistant cultivars through marker-assisted selection. The transfer of R-genes from race 1 resistant donors to susceptible recipients via MAS has been rapid because the resistant alleles are dominant, found in both heirloom and modern cultivars, and identifiable without phenotyping using SNP markers tightly linked to the causal loci . Once FW1 was discovered, we knew that we had a robust solution to the race 1 resistance problem; however, we had virtually no knowledge of the diversity of Fusarium wilt R-genes in populations of the wild octoploid progenitors and heirloom cultivars of cultivated strawberry that might be needed to cope with pathogen race evolution . We did not purposefully set out to identify redundant R-genes but rather to scour global diversity for ancestrally diverse R-genes, both to facilitate R-gene pyramiding and inform future searches for sources of resistance to as yet unknown races of the pathogen, in addition to assessing the frequency, diversity, and distribution of R-genes in the wild and domesticated reservoirs of genetic diversity . Our results paint a promising picture for the identification of genes for resistance to race 2 and other as yet unknown races of the pathogen. As our phenotypic screening studies showed, the frequency of resistance to race 2 was comparable to that observed for race 1 . Similar to our findings for race 1, the sources we identified for resistance to race 2 were symptomless, which suggests that gene-for-gene resistance might underlie their phenotypes. The genetic basis of resistance to race 2 and other races of the pathogen, however, has not yet been elucidated. There is empirical evidence that resistance to Australian isolates of the pathogen might be quantitative . Henry et al. showed that the non-chlorotic symptom syndrome caused by Australian Fof isolates differs from the chlorotic symptom syndrome caused by California and Japanese Fof isolates . Hence, the genetic basis of resistance to the wilt- and yellowsfragariae diseases could be markedly different. We identified several strong sources of resistance to Australian and other non-California isolates of the pathogen that should accelerate the discovery of novel race-specific R-genes, elucidation of genetic mechanisms, and development of resistant cultivars . Growing resistant cultivars is indisputably a highly effective and cost-free method for preventing losses to Fusarium wilt race 1 in strawberry . We estimate that approximately two-thirds of the cultivars grown in California since the earliest outbreaks in 2005 were highly susceptible, whereas the other one-third were highly resistant .