In Sugar Cane the novelist Paul Bailey describes what happens when someone is exposed at an impressionable age to religion in a brutally corrupt or merely stupid form and has to come to terms with that exposure: whether healing might be possible and what that healing might look like. Bailey suggests an alternative narrative, where, despite the suffering of his characters, the word ‘religion’ means more to him than it does to Irvin Yalom, who wrote of his belief after his own childhood exposure to the authoritarianism of his parents’ Jewish orthodoxy, that ‘faith, like so many other early irrational beliefs and fears, is a burden’.

The volcanic island of Anak Krakatau emerged from the sea in 1930. The antlion Myrmeleon frontalis has only become established on Anak Krakatau within the last five years, despite having been present on the other Krakatau Islands for at least 50 years.

The appearance of the antlions on Anak Krakatau seems to have coincided with the construction of a shelter hut in 1986 which provides a suitable under-floor habitat of dry dusty soil for the larvae to construct their pits. From the hut site they have extended into sub-optimal locations around the bases of clumps of wild sugarcane, Saccharum spontaneum, on the adjacent lower slopes of the outer cone ash fields.

The soil around the Saccharum chimps is variable. Fine deposits are suitable for antlion larvae, more gravelly soils are not. The antlion larvae inhabiting the Saccharum clumps are disturbed by rain which destroys their pits.

These two habitats, the hut and Saccharum sites, are the only places on the island that are occupied by the antlion larvae. They have quite different micro-climates so that the two populations are out of synchrony with each other.

Leaves of a mottled stripe disease-susceptible cultivar (B-4362) and of a mottled stripe disease-resistant cultivar (SP 70–1143) of sugar cane (interspecific hybrids of Saccharum) were inoculated with the diazotrophic endophytes, Herbaspirillum rubrisubalbicans or Herbaspirillum seropedicae, via injection into the apex of the stem. At 7 and 20 d.a.i., H. seropedicae could be isolated only from a small necrotic area around the point of inoculation, where there was considerable degradation of host cells, and was not detected in any other part of the leaves. This suggested a hypersensitive response by the host to this bacterium, and no disease symptoms formed on either cultivar. By contrast, H. rubrisubalbicans could be re-isolated from throughout the infected leaves of both cultivars at both harvests and produced widespread disease symptoms on the leaves of cv. B-4362.

Symptoms consisted of necrotic regions near the point of inoculation, and red stripes and red patches along the vertical axis of the leaves, where the bacteria had spread in the primary and secondary veins. The xylem-conducting elements in diseased regions of leaves were filled with bacteria and, at the edges of disease symptoms, the vessels were filled with a gum which stained blue-green with toluidine blue. This material probably contained phenolic compounds, and was produced as a host defence response. Leaves of cv. SP 70–1143 only developed small red stripes near the point of inoculation. These symptoms did not spread along the leaves, and the infected xylem vessels were never seen to be completely full of bacteria. Instead, the vessels contained encapsulated bacterial colonies attached to secondary wall deposition; these colonies were surrounded by blue-green material that might have been host-defence gums. In cv. B-4362, bacteria were abundant in the intercellular spaces of mesophyll adjacent to infected xylem, and also filled sub-stomatal cavities. Immunogold labelling using polyclonal antisera raised against H. rubrisubalbicans gave a weak signal with the bacteria in cv. SP 70–1143, showing that few binding sites were available to the antibodies. By contrast, bacteria in cv. B-4362 reacted strongly with the antibody, suggesting that they had a denser coating of immunoreactive mucus. In the later stages of infection of cv. B-4362, lysed bacteria were seen within degraded plant cells surrounded by a matrix of plant gums and bacterial mucus. This matrix reacted strongly to the H. rubrisubalbicans antibodies. Immunogold labelling using antibodies against nitrogenase component II showed that nitrogenase was expressed by bacteria in the early stages of infection of cv. B-4362, but not in later stages, or by bacteria infecting cv. SP 70–1143.

Cuba's agriculture after the 1959 revolution had been based on large-scale, capital intensive monoculture, which made Cuba heavily dependent on the socialist bloc for subsidized agrichemical inputs and for set prices of agricultural exports. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies in 1989–90, Cuba's inputs of fertilizer, pesticides, and petroleum dropped by more than half Cuba responded with a dramatic shift in its agricultural development model that featured appropriate technology, alternative organization of labor, alternative planning, and environmental preservation. Cuban pest control efforts now focus on biological control and on enhanced monitoring and diagnostic techniques. Soil management emphasizes biofertilizers and vermiculture. Minimum tillage and crop rotation are frequent practices among Cuba's independent farmers, agricultural cooperatives, and state farms. The transition to low-input agriculture has decreased the exodus of people from rural areas to cities, and has lead to establishment of lab or camps with volunteer labor and long-term programs for rebuilding rural communities. To address the loss of important food imports while ensuring environmental conservation, agricultural planning now gives priority to crop rotations, city gardens, and introduction of food crops in sugar cane areas.