A maize crop attacked by the fall armyworm. PHOTO | NMG
As the fall armyworm continues to ravage crops in the region,
the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has come up with a mobile
application to help farmers and governments fight the pest.
The
Fall Armyworm Monitoring and Early Warning System (Famews) will enable
farmers and agricultural workers to report the level of infestation and
map the spread of the pest, and the measures that are most effective in
managing it.
The FAO has already provided the app to
336 community focal people. Experts say that spotting the pest when it
is still a larva is key to prevention.
“The app will
help us build our collective knowledge of fall armyworm in Africa, and
connect all the dots, that is from how and where it spreads to what
makes it weaker and less damaging,” said FAO senior agricultural officer
Keith Cressman.
“The app is useful on two fronts: For
farmers and agricultural workers in the direct management of their
crops to prevent further infestations and reduce damage, and for all
actors involved in managing fall armyworm in Africa by providing vital
analysis on risks, spread and management.”
Once farmers and workers check their crops for infestation and upload the required data, the app calculates infestation levels.
The
data is captured by national fall armyworm focal points and transferred
to a global web-based platform. It is then analysed to give a real-time
situation overview with maps and the measures that were most effective
in reducing its impact.
Guidance
The
FAO says updates to the app in the coming months will provide
additional functionality such as an offline advisory system that
provides immediate guidance to the user, based on the collected data,
and a tool that will use a mobile phone camera to determine the pest’s
damage to the maize.
The worm has already infected
millions of hectares of maize in Africa - the staple food across the
continent-- threatening the food security of more than 300 million
people.
“The worm tears the crop apart. When you watch
it feed, it ploughs through the maize comb, or the leaf and as it is
feeding. The waste comes out immediately, that means it never gets full.
It is a voracious pest,” said FAO crop production officer for East
Africa Matthew Abang.
“The cost of fall armyworm is not
just the drop in yield. There are serious post-harvest consequences in
terms of micro toxin contamination of maize like aflatoxin ,”said Dr
Abang.
The pest is found in all 121 districts of
Uganda, all the 47 counties of Kenya, all 17 provinces of Burundi, the
whole of Ethiopia and all the 30 districts of Rwanda. South Sudan has
been partly affected, and the pest has not been reported in Djibouti
yet.
In Kenya, the pest has destroyed between 11,000
and 15,000 hectares of maize, and in Rwanda, the figure stands at more
than 15,300 hectares.
In Ethiopia, 1.7 million hectares
of maize have been destroyed — approximately 22 per cent of the total
maize planted in the country.
South Sudan is experiencing a food shortage after the worm attacked six major farming areas.
There are no known chemicals that have been developed specifically to kill the fall armyworm.
Related stories
No comments :
Post a Comment