The latest news about entomology, brought to you by the Entomological Society of America
By Andrew Porterfield The fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda) is a major corn pest in South America, known to devour corn crops from Argentina to the Southeastern United States. Farmers have typically battled the worm’s infestation with chemical insecticides, but they have been met (unsurprisingly) with resistant insects. Transgenic corn raised to express Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) […]
Dominic Reisig, an entomologist at North Carolina State University, received a phone call in 2013 from a farmer who was having trouble with fall armyworms (Spodoptera frugiperda), an insect pest that costs farmers in the southeastern United States tens of millions of dollars each year. This seemed odd because the farmer had planted Bt corn, […]
Este comunicado está disponible en español. Although maize was originally domesticated in Mexico, the country’s average yield per hectare is 38% below the world’s average. In fact, Mexico imports 30% of its maize from foreign sources to keep up with internal demand. To combat insect pests, Mexican farmers rely primarily on chemical insecticides. Approximately 3,000 […]
