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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Ravaged by a caterpillar: on the armyworm invasion in India -Priyanka Pulla

Ravaged by a caterpillar: on the armyworm invasion in India -Priyanka Pulla

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published Published on Sep 24, 2018   modified Modified on Sep 24, 2018
-The Hindu

First detected in Karnataka only in May this year, the fall armyworm, a native of the Americas, has already spread as far as West Bengal and Gujarat, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Priyanka Pulla reports on the deficiencies in India’s quarantine regime

It is a hot day in September, and two men are prising open the leaves of maize in a field in Karnataka’s Chikkaballapur district. The crop is two months away from being harvested, but the leaves look diseased. Some have streaks of white on them, while others are peppered with holes. Soon, one of the men, entomologist Arakalagud Nanjundaiah Shylesha, spies the culprit behind these holes — a small greenish-brown worm with dark lines along its length and an inverted ‘Y’ on its head. It looks like any of the thousands of pests that infest fields in India each year, but this one is special.

It is the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda), a native of the Americas, which was first seen in Asia five months ago. Since its identification in the State’s Shivamogga district in May, the pest has reached as far as West Bengal and Gujarat.

Shylesha shakes half-a-dozen of the caterpillars into his hand. They are of different sizes, which means that they are at different stages, or instars, of the larval life cycle. There are six such instars in the fall armyworm’s life, and between the first and the last, its appetite changes dramatically. Within days, it turns from a light feeder into a voracious eater that can wipe out farms. After pupation, adult moths emerge. As Nanjundaiah carefully transfers the specimens into a plastic bottle, his colleague, Sampath Kumar, remarks, “Not even a single plant is without damage. Oh my god!”

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The Hindu, 22 September, 2018, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/ravaged-by-a-caterpillar/article25010469.ece?homepage=true


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