On April 9, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences organized the release of the manual on the prevention and control of the grassland nightcrawler and the video report meeting on the prevention and control technology, and released the latest prevention and control technology of the grassland nightcrawler to the plant protection stations of all provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) across the country. Tang Huajun, member of the party leading group of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and president of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, attended the meeting and made a speech. Zhang Shengsheng, secretary of the party group of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Wei Qiwen, director of the National Agricultural Technology Extension Service Center, Zhu Enlin, deputy director of the Department of PlantAtion Management of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, and Wu Kongming, deputy secretary of the party group and vice president of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, attended the meeting. The meeting was presided over by Zhou Xueping, director of the Institute of Plant Protection of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
Since its incursion into China in December 2018, the grassland moth has posed a major threat to the safety of food crops such as corn. The Party Central Committee, the State Council, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs attach great importance to it and put forward clear arrangements and requirements for fighting the battle of prevention and control and ensuring food security. The Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences took urgent action and organized a coordinated research team to urgently launch the joint research task of the academy in June 2019 to comprehensively promote the relevant work.
Research and development of a complete set of prevention and control technologies
After more than a year of work, the research team led by Academician Wu Kongming has made breakthrough progress, providing important technical support and reserves for the initial victory in the prevention and control of the national grassland night moth. In view of the urgent need to resolutely win the battle against the prevention and control of the grassland moth and make every effort to ensure the safety of national grain and agricultural production, the team of academician Wu Kongming focused on the needs of agricultural production, took industrial problems as the guide and guided the practice of grass-roots prevention and control as the goal, and developed a set of grassland moth prevention and control technologies. This technology divides the occurrence area of grassland nightcrawler in China into annual breeding area, wintering area and migration area, which provides a scientific basis for "zoning governance".
The technology has been developed and formed a practical grassland nightcrawler detection and reporting technology system, one is the grassland nightcrawler automatic identification system, farmers, grass-roots plant protection personnel can use mobile phones to take pictures or directly upload images can be identified in real time; the other is the grassland nightcrawler population monitoring and reporting system that can provide network shortcut services, by providing field survey data to predict the development dynamics of the population and the appropriate period of control. The technology also proposes a two-step prevention and control strategy of "emergency prevention and control and green sustainable control" in China, and within one or two years, the implementation of a comprehensive control technology system based on chemical control, physical control, biological control and agricultural control to solve the problem of emergency control of grassland moths; in 3 to 5 years, build and implement a comprehensive prevention and control technology system with advanced technologies such as accurate monitoring and early warning and efficient interception of migration and flight as the core, so as to achieve the goal of low-cost and green sustainable control.
At present, some technologies and achievements have been promoted in Yunnan, Guangxi, Sichuan, Fujian, Jiangsu, Shandong, Henan and other regions, and have also guided the production of a number of large and medium-sized pest control enterprises, which has effectively enhanced the confidence of grassland night moth prevention and control. In the next step, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences will promote the wide application of new technologies in technical training and production guidance, provide strong technical support for this year's prevention and control practice, and better serve grass-roots agricultural technicians and farmers.
The prevention and control of the grassland moth has received attention
It is understood that the grassland moth mainly harms food crops and cash crops such as corn, sorghum, wheat and sugarcane. The grassland moth may invade China this year from 4 paths: the first is from Myanmar and Laos into the Yunnan region, and the second is from India,Myanmar into Tibet. The third route enters Guangxi, Guangdong and Hainan from Vietnam, and the fourth path is from the Philippines to Guangdong and Fujian. In China, at present, the grassland night moth has been controlled more than 1.9 million times, and some plots have been prevented and controlled more than twice.
This year's No. 1 document of the Central Committee clearly pointed out that it is necessary to do a good job in the prevention and control of major diseases and insect pests such as the grassland night moth. The No. 1 document of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has deployed the major events in this year's agricultural and rural work, and the primary task is to unswervingly grasp grain production, ensure that this year's grain output is stable at more than 1.3 trillion kilograms, and strictly prevent and strictly control major diseases and insect pests such as grassland moths.
In addition, on February 21, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued the "2020 National Grassland Night Moth Prevention and Control Plan". It is mentioned that this year, China's grassland night moth occurrence situation is grim, the task of prevention and control is arduous, in accordance with the early planning, early warning, early preparation, early prevention and control requirements, while doing a good job in the prevention and control of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, continue to promote the prevention and control of the grassland night moth, effectively curb the large-scale outbreak of disasters, and strive to seize a bumper grain and agricultural harvest in the year of moderate prosperity.
On February 20, the day before that, the Ministry of Finance pre-allocated 1.4 billion yuan of agricultural production and water conservancy disaster relief funds to support all localities to do a good job in the prevention and control of major crop diseases and insect pests. Among them, 490 million yuan was arranged for the prevention and control of grassland moth, which was used to support 21 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government) such as Yunnan and Guangxi to do a good job in the prevention and control of grassland moth.
China will be in a repeating trend
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) describes the grassland moth as a dangerous transboundary pest that has the potential to spread rapidly due to its natural ability to spread and the opportunities offered by international trade. Farmers need strong support for sustainable grassland moth management in farming through integrated pest management (IPM) activities. The meadow moth cannot be eradicated.
Wu Kongming said at the report meeting that the grassland nightcrawler originally originated in the Americas, invaded from the southern region of the United States to the western part of Africa in January 2016, and then developed rapidly. "Entering China from the Pu'er region of Yunnan in December 2018, it has spread to Australia in recent times, and it can be said that it has become a major pest in the world."
The meadow moth belongs to the Lepidoptera noctiacea family Noctuida and the Spodoptera genus. From the biological characteristics, the grassland night moth is a fully metamorphosed insect, divided into four insect states: egg, larvae, pupae and adult. The grassland moth is highly adaptable to temperature, 11-30 °C is its suitable temperature range, under the condition of 28 °C, it can complete a generation in about 30 days. After the overall temperature is lower than 10 degrees, it will not develop.
According to reports, the larvae of the grassland nightcrawler generally have 6 ages, of which the 6-year-old larvae are the most serious. On their preferred corn, young larvae feed on leaves to form translucent film "window holes", and older larvae feed on leaves to form irregular long-shaped holes, and even new leaves that grow are seriously damaged and tattered, and can also feed on unsampled male ears and young fruit ears.
Depending on the adaptability of different host plants, the grass nocturnal moth includes the "Corns train" and "rice strains" (Rice strain). "What invades our country is the corn type, which can be harmed at all stages of the growth period of corn, and serious harm can reduce production by more than 50%."
Not only does it prefer corn, but the grass moth is a vegetative moth. Wu Kongming introduced that the current research shows that the larvae of the grassland nightcrawler can feed more than 350 species of plants in 76 families. "In our country, especially in April-May and October-November, in the absence of corn, the grass moth can harm wheat, but also peanuts, soybeans, and many other weeds."
The adult of the grassland nocturnal moth has a strong reproductive ability, and the female adult lifespan is generally 7-21 days, during which it can mate and lay eggs multiple times, and the average single female can lay 1500 eggs in a lifetime, up to 2000 eggs. In addition, the grassland moth has a strong ability to migrate, and adults can use wind power to migrate 100 kilometers per night, and if the wind direction is suitable, the flight distance will be longer.
It is worth noting that an important characteristic of the grassland moth larvae is predatory, and some other pests will be eaten by it when they encounter the elderly grassland moth larvae. Wu Kongming introduced, "Our survey in Yunnan shows that almost 90% of the bugs in the corn fields in Yunnan are now grassland moths, because other bugs are eaten by it, which is an important habit of its dominance in the ecosystem." ”
Based on the above characteristics, the grassland moth has become one of the top ten important agricultural pests in the world. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, based on 2018 estimates of 12 African countries, the annual loss of the grassland moth to maize is as high as 17.7 million tons, enough to feed tens of millions of people. The vast majority of the losses go directly to small-scale corn growers, who mostly depend on crop cultivation for their livelihoods.
Wang Zhenying, a researcher at the Institute of Plant Protection of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, introduced at the report meeting that from January 2019 to October 2019, the grassland night moth invaded 1538 counties in 26 provinces and regions in China except the three northeastern provinces and 26 provinces and regions in the northwest, Qinghai and Xinjiang in the northwest, of which 22 provinces found larvae, and the area of occurrence was more than 15 million mu, and the actual area of harm was 2.46 million mu.
"As an invasive insect, the grassland night moth has completed two important processes from invasion-colonization to pre-outbreak, and will recur in the next few years, posing a serious threat to China's food security." Wang Zhenying stressed.
Source containment Zonal governance
After the invasion of the grassland night moth, the research team including Wu Kongming and others carried out emergency research. At present, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has developed a set of grassland nightcrawler prevention and control technologies, which divide the occurrence areas of grassland nightcrawlers in China into annual breeding areas, wintering areas and migration areas, which provide a scientific basis for "zoning governance".
According to Wu Kongming, the core problem of the grassland nightcrawler is that it cannot overwinter in most parts of China in winter, mainly distributed in the annual breeding area in the south. If we control the insect sources in Yunnan, Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan in winter, then we will eliminate the native insect sources and the insect sources from the Indochina Peninsula and Myanmar, because the first stop of these migrating insect sources is also in South China, so the prevention and control of South China is a core issue related to the success or failure of national prevention and control."
The technology has also developed and formed a production of practical grassland moth detection and reporting technology system, one is the grassland moth automatic identification system, farmers, grass-roots plant protection personnel with mobile phones to take pictures or directly upload images can be identified in real time; the other is to provide network fast services for the grassland moth population monitoring and reporting system, by providing field survey data to predict the population development dynamics and control period.
The technology also proposes a two-step prevention and control strategy of "emergency prevention and control and green sustainable control" adopted by China. That is, within one or two years, the implementation of a comprehensive control technology system based on chemical control, physical control, biological control and agricultural control to solve the problem of emergency control of grassland moths; in 3-5 years, the construction and implementation of accurate monitoring and early warning and efficient interception of flight and other advanced technologies as the core of the integrated control technology system, to achieve low-cost, green sustainable control goals.
Wu Kongming introduced that at present, for pests that are sudden and have a strong reproductive ability, and often cause great harm in the short term, "chemical control is the most core method and the most important means." ”
Five factors of chemical control
Yuan Huizhu, a researcher at the Institute of Plant Protection of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, focused on the chemical control of the grassland night moth and the rational use of pesticides at this report meeting. He said, "For the chemical control of the grassland nightcrawler, we consider five factors, is the drug effective? Is the dosage accurate? How scientific is the technology? How feasible is the technical solution? What about ecological medicinal properties? These are all issues that we need to consider and solve. ”
He gave an example of some problems in practice, "In Nanning, Guangxi province last September, 80 acres of corn fields, because the grassland moth overlapped for generations, the couple carried the spray four times to beat the medicine, but the prevention effect was still ineffective." ”
Based on the consideration of the above problems, Yuan Huizhu et al. innovated and improved the selection method of grassland night moth agent, and on this basis, the use method of prevention and control products was also studied, so as to form a variety of schemes.
He introduced, for example, for the "drill type" (grassland moth can drill into the corn horn mouth, heart leaf) of the way of harm, spray method although the effect, but last year guizhou Academy of Agricultural Sciences Plant Protection Institute experts made a granule accurately thrown into the corn horn mouth, can achieve 90% of the effect. "This way of throwing particles with this trumpet mouth is ideal, but can this way quickly reach a high-efficiency model?" We also specially did a drone to spread particles, and the particles can accurately roll into the heart leaf, which has a very good effect on the grass moth. ”
Yuan Huizhu and others also compared the costs of different solutions. "The cost of the sustained-release seed coating agent per mu of land is 15 yuan, and the control is one month; the spray preparation is about 10 yuan per mu, but the manual operation cost is 7 yuan; the UAV sustained release granule, the cost of the agent is slightly more expensive, but the efficiency is very high."
According to reports, as of now, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has developed a set of prevention and control technologies, some of which have been promoted in Yunnan, Guangxi, Sichuan, Fujian, Jiangsu, Shandong, Henan and other regions, and have also guided the production of a number of large and medium-sized pest control enterprises.
Source: Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, The Paper, etc
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