Indian agriculture officials have launched an awareness campaign among farmers about the fall armyworm moth and its management following the confirmation late last month that the voracious maize-eating pest has reached India.
Indian agriculture officials have launched an awareness campaign among farmers about the fall armyworm moth and its management following the confirmation late last month that the voracious maize-eating pest has reached India.
Indian authorities have this month (August) begun exploring ways to contain the fast-moving pest which is native to North and South America. In Africa, after its first detection in Nigeria in January 2016, fall armyworms have rapidly spread across almost 22 million square kilometres in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The caterpillar of the Spodoptera frugiperda moth goes unnoticed in its early stages but turns voracious as it grows, destroying entire fields of maize (corn) overnight. The moth can fly long distances overnight to attack maize and a variety of valuable crops such as cotton, rice, peanuts, apples and oranges.
An official pest-alert issued on 30 July by the nodal Indian Council of Agricultural Research said that based on surveys carried out earlier in the month, S. frugiperda infestation was found in more than 70 per cent of the maize fields of Chikkaballapur in the southern Indian state of Karnataka.
Read more at SciDev.Net
Photo credit: Hans via Pixabay
