The Armyworm was introduced in experimental plots in West Africa in 2015 as a preditor (to eat targeted pests).

 HOW TO CONQUER FALLWORM/ARMYWORM

By Kabwe based Agriculturist

The fallworm (the pest that has caused current havoc in Zambia) was introduced in experimental plots in West Africa in 2015 as a preditor (to eat targeted pests).

So adding adjuvants to the right chemicals can help the insecticides stay longer on plants. In this case the adjuvants must be wetters, spreader or stickers or one that combines all these characteristics. An adjuvant is a substance that helps the pesticide to work well.

Apparently things went wrong. The preditor became pest.

The fall worm lays and hides eggs under leaves of crops instead of the top. This makes eggs escape common killers and pesticides that land on the top side of the leaves.

The common hiding place of larva ends up to be the funnels of maize. Out of 500 larve hatched from a butch only one strongest will eat others then resort to eating the plant before going into moth stage.

The worm attacks maize and other common crops like soya, sunflower, cotton at different stages. So it may return and catch our maize at grain stage. We must standby for its second/third attack.

It has sprayed well in Zambia because of mono cropping of grains especially maize.

The remedy is there but only correct chemical single doses or cocktails of specific brands are working. However chemicals must be switched to avoid resistance and chemicals can only be applied correctly manually by knapsacks. Spraying by plane or tractor boom sprayers misses the maize funnels.

Note that a hollow cone nozzle nicely adjusted to give a jet into maize funnel must be used. Avoid shower sprays. Avoid flat-fan nozzles.

The other challenge is that UN-WHO discourages use and manudacture of systemic pesticides on food crops to avoid subsequent human poisoning. So we have mostly contact pesticides which are easily washed away by rains and therefore do not stay long on plants. Granular contact pesticide can be manually poured into maize funnel at a huge labour cost.

Spraying pesticides is a technical matter.

First you need to know the application rates of a pesticide (vol or weight of pesticide to apply per ha).
To simplify this farmers are often must know how many sprayers (of fixed volumes) they spray per ha. Then you can know how much chemical you add per sprayer. You often call this dilution.

Sprayers must have the right spraying tip ends. These are called nozzles.
The two groups of nozzles. One group is called hollow cones. These are for spraying pesticides for insects.
The Flatfan nozzles are for spraying herbicides (weedkillers).

So our farmers must use correct hollow cones at the right pressure and right forward speed.
This calls for technical training because few understand this.
  I say this very few people in Zambia understand the spraying subject and why we insist on practical trainings.

Sprayer caliberation is still a big challenge in our agric industry because even just determination of area is sure a challenge. So you can understand our worries that most chemicals are wrongly applied.

Get in field a check how many know these things practically?
I got worried when i saw farmers on ZNBC swinging the sprayer lances wrongly.