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Submit your questions: Fawligen and baculoviruses

aislinnpearson Author

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    Display nameAislinn Pearson
    First nameAislinn
    Last namePearson
    Emailaislinn.pearson@rothamsted.ac.uk
    RoleScientist
    CountryUnited Kingdom (UK)
    OrganisationRothamsted Research
    Area of ResearchBiology, Monitoring, Surveillance and Scouting
    Describe your research

    After completing an MSc in Applied Ecology at Imperial College London, where I specialised in Integrated Pest Management (IPM), I did a PhD at Rothamsted Research and Lancaster University. During my PhD I studied the impact of the insect virus Spodoptera frugiperda multiple nucleopolyhedrovirus on the migratory ability of the fall armyworm. This virus is also commercially available as a biological control agent. More recently I have managed a pilot project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which tested several different technologies for a real-time monitoring of Fall Armyworm in Kenya.

    ORCID iD
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    Member sinceDecember 1, 2020
    Topics posted6
    Replies12
  • Topics Started

    • Submit your questions: Fawligen and baculoviruses
      March 7, 2021

    • Research Dataset: Fall Armyworm and the response to Zinc fertiliser in Maize
      February 16, 2021

    • New review on fall armyworm biology, distribution and management
      January 21, 2021

    • Research Update: Strain Distributions in Sub-saharan Africa
      January 4, 2021

    • Research updates on in-field monitoring and predictive models: how far have we got?
      December 14, 2020

    • Piloting different technologies for real-time monitoring of Fall Armyworm in Kenya
      December 1, 2020

  • Replies

    • Congratulations all. Great to see your work finally come to fruition!
      April 20, 2022

    • Hi Sivam, I can't help you validate the app I'm afraid as I don't have a culture of fall armyworm at the moment, and thankfully the UK is the one place the FAW hasn't yet reached. However, perhaps @ssubramaniaicipe-org and @rob-meagherusda-gov might be able to help you find people who do have cultures to photograph. I believe you have also been in touch with James Bell about using some of the photographs we have from the Smart Armyworm project, which we will of course send to you with pleasure.
      March 4, 2021

    • We have a farmer in the UK who recently tried this for aphid control in sugar beet (you can hear his experiences here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bbro-december-beetcast-benefiting-from-beneficials/id1530066648?i=1000500931597). My primary concern was what the impact of mass releasing thousands of insect predators is on the surrounding insect community. Is there any research work on this from other species or cropping systems?
      January 28, 2021

    • An interesting concept Sundar. What is the primary use of cowpea/ sunnhemp - is it mainly for human consumption or animal consumption? I always like intercropping - the benefits are often more than simply for armyworm, but also relate to better soil health, better plant diversity and so better soil microbial diversity.
      January 28, 2021

    • This is really interesting work Marcellin. It seems similar to what I saw in Kenya - when it is hot and dry, attacks seem to be more prolific than when there is heavy rainfaill. Only an observation, but evidence such as this is very useful. Do you think the insects in the Ruzizi Plain might be a source population for the insects in the Kabare territory, or are they more likely to discrete populations? From what I know, there the altitude winds that are good for insect migration are not common in the DRC because of the rainforest. However, you probably know the weather patterns there better than I do so it will be interesting to know what you think. Do you plan to publish this?
      January 28, 2021

    • An excellent and very interesting paper. Thanks for posting Sundar
      January 21, 2021

    • When I was in Kitale, Kenya in November 2019 I was told that there was an outbreak of African armyworm in the nearby vicinity. This was just from speaking with the farmers though - unfortunately we did not have time to scout for the African armyworm ourselves, and confirm the sightings. Your post also reminded me of a paper I read recently, which looked at natural enemy communities and habitat. In simple habitats such as agriculture, natural enemies which are generalists (attack many different kinds of prey) tend to do better than specialists. This is a widely accepted ecological theory with much evidence behind it. What was interesting about this paper though is that it highlights the importance of habitat diversity for natural enemy populations. Of course, we cannot pretend that agricultural land can ever to have the diversity of a forest or grassland - we are using the land to grow food, and for this reason it will always have less diversity than natural habitats - but it suggests to me that diverse cropping systems such as push-pull could also have a benefit to more diverse natural enemy communities, possibly even under situations where there is a new invasive species. We could further assume that including on-farm micro-habitats in and around the crop might benefit this diversity of natural enemies. In the UK wild flower and diverse grass borders around agricultural fields are becoming more popular as one example of micro-habitats. These seem to have little impact on the number of beneficial insects into the crop, but seem likely to play an important role in the conservation of natural enemy communities. These diverse margins cannot be thought of as replacing large wild spaces such as parks and nature reserves of course - it is better to think of them as conserving as much wild space as possible, even in small corners of arable fields. They are also potentially our resevoir of natural enemies should we ever find ourselves faced with a different kind of invasive insect pest. This is the paper if you are interested: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.13642 I have always thought the African countries are very fortunate in this respect. Smallholder farming is naturally more diverse than the large scale commercial agriculture, and many of these countries are in a position where there is still diversity to conserve. In the UK for example, we have to think more in terms of habitat restoration than habitat conservation.
      December 31, 2020

    • As someone who looked at differences in migration capacity between male and female moths during my PhD, I found this fascinating. Thanks for sharing Vinod.
      December 31, 2020

    • Yes. We also tried to test a similar app and found the greatest limitation was cost of mobile data. Still, I enjoyed listening to the podcast. Thanks for posting Geoffrey
      December 31, 2020

    • Hi Sundar, I'd add to your list of reasons that agro-ecological approaches often rely on monitoring - for example, the timing of some biological control options is crucial as they are most effective if the insect is infected in it's early instars. Our experience even on large commercial farms is that there are digital options available for monitoring but they are expensive, even on large commercial farms. The human alternative is scouting (or 'crop walking' as the agronomists here in the UK call it). Ideally this would be combined with pheromone lures to assess the adult immigration. I would personally argue that this should be done for all pesticides/ agronomic approaches because it means that you are targeting your pesticide use - good for the environment, but also essential for economic reasons. My personal view is that the digital pheromone traps have great potential to validate the larger scale pest models, but that the industry has not yet found a good economic model to support this technology - especially for smaller farms, with lower margins. I also believe these models are useful, but even with a pest prediction model farmers will still need to be out scouting in their crop at least once a week. This is time consuming however, and for this reason perhaps not done as often as it should be in some cases. This brings me onto my second observation. In my experience working in UK and African agriculture, I have found that some farmers/ agronomists enjoy engaging in the agro-ecological aspects of their work, and others don't. For this reason, my opinion is that one of the most important factors is the personality/ approach of the farmer, and also the conditions under which he/ she is farming. For example, I know that the push-pull system works very well for fall armyworm in Kenya but this is best suited to those farmers who have livestock to graze desmodium and can use/ sell the napier grass as feed. It is also a technology poorly suited to medium or large scale farms because it is not compatible with the larger equipment for sowing and harvesting. Even on small scale farms, push-pull technology takes 2-3 years to establish well, not least because there can be a learning curve which requires the farmers to be persistent over many seasons. The innovative farmers interested in such approaches are often more willing to take such risks and invest the time, but for many others it is simply too complex or poorly suited to the conditions under which they are farming. This is just my experience. I hope it is helpful to you.
      December 31, 2020

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    Recent Replies

    • Aislinn Pearson on HOW PUSH-PULL WORKS AGAINST Fall Armyworm?
      April 20, 2022
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      March 12, 2022
    • Manoharsinh Zala on Hello, Intergrated pest management family, i am currently doing a masters in entomology,so would like to ask if any member can suggest a paper/journal/book/site where it talks about the use of baits to control fall armyworm. A no smell, efficient(fast reaction before multiplication of species and species specific. Thanks in advance.),
      December 21, 2021
    • Roger Day on Hello, Intergrated pest management family, i am currently doing a masters in entomology,so would like to ask if any member can suggest a paper/journal/book/site where it talks about the use of baits to control fall armyworm. A no smell, efficient(fast reaction before multiplication of species and species specific. Thanks in advance.),
      September 20, 2021
    • Natasha Bhattarai on Gynandromorph in fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae)
      June 22, 2021

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