Fall armyworm easily develops resistance to pesticides; you can track it down by its appearance, droppings and bite marks, and only use pesticides when you actually see the pest
The fall armyworm, which strikes fear into farmers, is spreading in Taiwan, China; its main host plants span 76 families and 353 species, mainly damaging economic crops such as corn, rice, sorghum, cotton, cruciferous plants, cucurbits and solanaceous plants, and it may also show up in non-agricultural areas, such as schools, home vegetable plots, plants in military barracks, and golf course turf.
In Taiwan, China, after fall armyworm was successively found in Tongxiao, Miaoli on the 8th, Toucheng, Yilan on the 10th, and Lucao, Chiayi on the 10th, two more confirmed cases were added today (the 13th), from corn in Luye, Taitung and baby corn in Datong, Yilan; it prefers to eat corn and rice, and both strains are present. The "Fall Armyworm Disaster Emergency Response Team" has so far received a total of 78 reports from the public, including from Yunlin, Taichung, Hsinchu and other counties and cities, which are awaiting morphological identification by experts.
How should the country grasp the critical 14-day "golden eradication period"? Should farmers use pesticides in advance? How should physical control be carried out? What natural enemies does the fall armyworm have?
Young larvae and eggs cluster together, so you can seize the chance to remove them all at once
One generation of the fall armyworm lasts about 30 days, and it takes about 10 days to grow from larva to adult; if the weather is hot, this may shorten to 7 days, so the best time to wipe it out is before it grows into an adult with flight ability. Xu Rujun, a professor in the Department of Entomology at National Taiwan University, said the most troublesome thing about this pest is that it is "very good at flying": an adult fall armyworm can fly 100 kilometers in one night and 1,000 kilometers in its lifetime, and its host range is broader than that of the tobacco cutworm and the beet armyworm, so it should be removed completely in one go while the eggs and larvae are concentrated.
She further discussed epidemic prevention measures based on the fall armyworm's growth cycle: the fall armyworm prefers to lay eggs on lower leaves, and larvae hatch after 1-3 days; within 3-6 days they are in the first to second instar stage, and the larvae usually move in groups, especially liking to eat the tenderest parts of the leaves – the new tender leaf growth points where the leaf meets the stem; obvious holes and notches appear on the leaves, similar to the feeding marks of leaf moths.
