Pest-control teams fight insect invasion
Print Edition
Farmers in southwest China鈥檚 Yunnan Province are battling a new crop-eating insect.
So far, spodoptera frugiperda, or fall armyworm, have been found in more than 120 county-level regions in Yunnan since it was first detected in January.
Pest-control teams consisting of government officials, scientists, agricultural technology personnel and farmers are taking a raft of measures from pesticides to insecticidal lamps to fight the invasion.
Fall armyworms are native to the Americas but they have been moving eastward since 2016, sweeping across Africa before arriving in Asia. The pest has wreaked havoc in many countries, leading to a 20 to 30 percent of reduction in corn and sugarcane output in parts of Africa and Asia.
Some areas even saw complete crop failures.
It has spread across China鈥檚 southern and southwestern areas, affecting nearly 1 million hectares of farmland in 14 provincial-level regions including Yunnan, Guizhou, Henan and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
鈥淓qual emphasis should be given on the control of both larvae and moths of the pest,鈥 said Liu Yongchang from the plant protection station in the city of Pu鈥檈r, Yunnan.
Hu Minghan, a corn farmer from Jinggu Dai and Yi Autonomous County, added: 鈥淔all armyworms like to dig into the stems and nibble on the tender shoots.鈥
Hu has been busy fighting the insects since January when he planted 40 hectares of corn. He did not identify the armyworm at the very beginning, nor did he realize its dangers.
Shen Aidong with the Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences said the fall armyworm can be divided into two haplotypes. One mainly feeds on corn, cotton and sorghum, while the other on rice and various forage grasses. They can cause an estimated 20 to 72 percent of corn failure.
In late May, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs urged local authorities to take concrete measures to prevent and control fall armyworm.
Efforts are also urged to strengthen education, improve basic infrastructure, intensify international cooperation and establish a long-term mechanism for preventing and controling the pest.
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