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Fall armyworm: Over 5,000 acres damaged

24 Dec 2020

The fall armyworm infestations are now being reported from the Uva, Eastern, Southern, North Central, and North Western Provinces, with crop damages of over 5,000 acres of maize being reported, it is learnt. According to the Department of Agriculture’s crop forecast reports, the extent of maize grown during the Maha season extends over 19,066 hectares (47,665 acres), out of which the districts that cultivated the highest amounts of maize are recorded from Ampara with 4,853 hectares (12,132.5 acres), Anuradhapura with 3,497 hectares (8,742.5 acres), and Monaragala with 2,672 hectares (6,680 acres). With damage to crop continuing, The Morning contacted Department of Agriculture Director General Dr. W.M.W. Weerakoon to inquire about the extent of crop damage, to which he responded: “We are heading towards the harvesting period and will only be able to give an official statistic of the extent of crop damage once the yields are harvested. We are well aware of these crop damages and the district agrarian officers have been deployed with a team to inspect these areas as well.” According to Weerakoon, the expected extent of crop damage is much lower than what is communicated by the farmers to the media. He also noted that the farmers’ negligence had been a contributing factor in the spread of the fall armyworm this time. “Even though we told them to cultivate maize with break crops in between to avoid aggravating infestations if it settles in, this time they had cultivated fields full of maize, which made it difficult to control the infestations.” Weerakoon also noted that the spodoptera frugiperda multicapsid nuclear polyhedrosis virus (SfMNPV), used against the fall armyworm, was now made available and farmers will only be issued the virus by the agrarian officers based on the cycle of the fall armyworm infestation. The virus is said to be only effective on the second generation of the fall armyworm, and if it is applied at the early stages of the cultivation where the virus is introduced to the eggs, it later grows into the caterpillar and the dead caterpillar would later emanate a higher viral load.

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