| Army worm Fall army worm |
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|---|---|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Order: | Lepidoptera |
| Family: | Noctuidae |
| Genus: | Spodoptera |
| Species: | S. frugiperda |
| Binomial name | |
| Spodoptera frugiperda (J.E. Smith, 1797) |
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The Fall Armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda) is part of the order of Lepidoptera and is the caterpillar life stage of a moth. It is regarded as a pest and can wreak havoc with crops if left to multiply. Its name is derived from its feeding habits. They will eat everything in an area and once the food supply is exhausted the entire "army" will move to the next available food source.
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The larvae are a dull yellow to gray with stripes running down the length of the body. The mature caterpillar is approximately 1.5 to 2 inches (51 mm) in length.
The armyworm's diet consists mainly of grasses and small grain crops. An infestation is hard to detect as the caterpillars migrate to new feeding areas in the cool of the night. When the caterpillars near maturity, they can lay waste to an entire crop in a few days.
In mid-April 1999, an army worm infestation started in southern Ethiopia, spreading into the north the following month and into the Jubba valley of Somalia in early May. Similar outbreaks affected the Rift Valley Province of Kenya and parts of Uganda at the same time. While Ethiopian officials had stocks of pesticides to treat 350,000 hectares of affected land, neither Kenyan or Ugandan officials had sufficient supplies to combat the insect and there was no central government to respond to the emergency in Somalia[1].
STAR radio in Liberia reported in January 2009 that Zota District in Bong County had been invaded by army worms, which had consumed vegetation and polluted creeks and running water[2][3]. They are moving to Guinea and Sierra Leone[3]. On 28 January 2009, the President of Liberia declared a state of emergency to deal with the infestation of army worms in the country[4].
December 2009 saw an infestation of ten regions of Tanzania. The infested regions include three of the five main grain-producing regions. The other two major grain-producing regions are at risk of infestation. Tanzania has trained farmers in fighting armyworms since 2007, and responded to forecasts of the late 2009 infestation by sending out hundreds of liters of pesticides to rural farmers. The first infestation was reported on 22 December and quickly spread to surrounding regions. The previous growing season saw Tanzania produce 10.872 millions tons of grain; after 10.337 million tons of domestic consumption the remaining 0.534 million tons were exported. As of 31 December, almost 1,400 acres (5.7 km2) of grain had been destroyed by armyworms.[5].
Spodoptera frugiperda cells (Sf9 and Sf21 cell lines) are commonly used in biomedical research for the purpose of recombinant protein expression using insect-specific viruses called baculoviruses. Recently a new transient transfection system (leading to a stable cell line) has been developed. This allows quick expression within 3 days opposed to several weeks with the Baculovirus expression system. This binary protein expression system has many desirable characteristics and is widely used.