India: Project SAFFAL Safeguards Corn Against Fall Armyworm
Spodoptera frugiperda, aka Fall Armyworm (FAW) – a highly invasive pest with substantial appetite, landed on Indian soils for the first time in May 2018, reports Rural Marketing. The pest quickly became a nationwide nuisance. By the end of 2018, FAW spread across the major maize growing regions and emerged as a significant threat to Indian farmers and agriculture. The early emergence in the crop life cycle, voracious feeding habit, large-scale aggressive behaviour, high reproduction, fast migration, and irreversible nature of crop damage, all made FAW a key pest. Notably, the FAW fed on many host plants and was found on sweet corn, baby corn, maize, sugarcane, and sorghum, with the potential to feed on many other agriculturally important food and feed crops in India. By early 2019, the FAW pest was reported in the states of Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and West Bengal.
Consequently, the availability of maize contracted significantly, resulting in the spike in prices of maize in the domestic market, demand-supply imbalance. It also triggered the tendering for imported maize to meet growing demand from poultry, animal feed, and starch industry. As FAW threatened the already ascending production graph of maize and future of maize farmers in India in 2018, the South Asia Biotechnology Centre (SABC) launched a massive programme “Safeguarding Agriculture & Farmers against Fall Armyworm (SAFFAL),” a multi-year project supported by FMC Corporation in March 2019.
Holding the collaboration as invaluable, Pramod Thota, President, FMC India, said: “FMC India, as a responsible research-based leader in crop protection, is committed to supporting sustainable agriculture in India. Project SAFFAL is another of FMC’s initiatives that aim to empower Indian farmers to protect their crops against such dreaded pests, such as Fall Armyworm, leading to enhanced farmers’ income and farm sustainability. We are proud to be partnering SABC in this endeavour with Project SAFFAL.”
Continue reading at Rural Marketing.
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