The fall army worm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda, invaded 26 provinces in China and colonized in southern and southwest China in 2019. Experts have made the judgement that in 2020, FAW will move northward earlier, in a wider area, with more serious damages, which will make the task of prevention and control even tougher. In addition to posing a serious threat to maize production, it may also affect the safe production of wheat in Yangtze River Basin and Huanghuai areas. The just published Central Document No. 1 listed the prevention and control of major pests such as FAW as an important measure to stabilize China's grain production in 2020. Whether IPP-CAAS can provide powerful monitoring and early warning system, technical support and decision making consultation for the prevention and control of FAW across the country, and to“grad food from insects” and guarantee this year's harvest is a major test for the whole institute. In face of the severe situa-tion of the novel coronavirus outbreak after the Spring Festival, the innovation teams focusing on food crop pest monitoring and control, economic crop pest monitoring and control, and pesticide chemistry and application have resolutely implemented the requirements of the Central Government and Ministries. They reacted quickly and actively, and made careful arrangements. While doing a good job in epidemic prevention and control, they have been adhering to the front line of fighting against FAW, providing a strong safeguard for the control of FAW.
In order to maintain the integrity of the field data on monitoring system, the innovation teams for economic crop pest monitoring and control, and food crop pest monitoring and control continued to stay in Jiangcheng, Lancang, Mangshi, Ruili and Xundian in Yunnan province, to carry out monitoring and research on field occurrence patterns of FAW.
After a short reunion with his family, Ph.D. student Zhao Shengyuan returned to the Yunnan experimental and monitoring station on the second day after the Chinese New Year. To cooperate with the national and local regulations on prevention and control of novel coronavirus, he was wearing a think face-mask all the way to the station. Under the premise of selfisolation, he continued to carry out the monitoring and research work on FAW. During the epidemic period, it happened to be the corn seedling stage in the test field, which was the peak time for FAW damages and also the critical time for conducting field survey to obtain the data of insect quantity. In order to reduce people gathering, Zhao Shengyuan took the initiative to undertake a number of different tasks. He “lived in the field” alone and carried out dynamic monitoring of the field populations, providing the first-hand data support for the occurrence and prevention of FAW.
Master student Tang Yin had been always conducting research on the occurrence pattern of FAW and the control effect of natural enemies under different seasonal conditions in Mang city, Yunnan province. During the epidemic, he himself took the reasonability of sowing at the experimental site, field management and pest investigation, etc. During the Chinese Spring Festival, when the villages and roads were sealed due to the epidemic and travel was incon-venient, he continued conducting field investigations according to the work plan and continuously collecting field data for investigating the occurrence of FAW, and establishing effective control methods.
Dr. Yang Xianming, Ph.D. student Sun Xiaoxu, and Master student Song Yifei, etc. had also conducted long-term monitoring and prevention research work on the cross-border migration of FAW at Yunnan border. FAW has a risk of harming wheat, while wheat in the Yangtze River Basin and the Huanghuaihai areas were turning green. In order to come up with a control plan for FAW on wheat as soon as possible, Dr. Yang Xianming and others went to Ruili and Xundian in Yunnan province to carry out a technical research experiment on control of FAW on wheat using maize as a trapping belt. It was a critical period for this work at the end of 2019 and the Spring Festival in 2020. To catch up with the best farming time, they went to choose the test plots and prepare the seeds during the 2020 New Year's holiday. Then they worked together with local workers to finish the farming work under the heavy rain. As the Chinese Spring Festival approaching, it coincided with the outbreak of the epidemic. While making epidemic prevention and control a top priority, Yang Xianming and others continued the field investigations while ensuring safety, and finally obtained valuable monitoring data. After accomplishing the tasks at the first phase, he returned to Beijing's home right on the Chinese New Year's Eve in order to cooperate with the epidemic prevention and control regulations. During the isolation period in Beijing, he remained working at home to analyze the data and summarize the results, eventually provided support for the safe agricultural production in 2020.
During the Spring Festival of 2020, it was the critical period for investigating the host selection preference and host risk assessment of FAW at Xinxiang Experi-mental station. In order to ensure the continuity of the experiment and avoid cross-infection of novel coronavirus on the road, Ph.D. student He Limei submitted the application to stay at the station to concentrate on the research work. During the Spring Festival, to avoid making troubles to the cafeteria and people gathering, she stored food enough for half a month, not only for herself, but also for the insects she was rearing.
Continuous rearing of FAW and mass reproduction of natural enemy parasitic wasps were the most important experimental materials for comprehensive basic re-search and field application research work once the novel coronavirus outbreak is contained. During the Spring Festival, research assistant Li Hongmeng and master student Gao Zupeng voluntarily gave up the opportunity to go home and reunite with their families. They had to overcome all kinds of difficulties and inconvenience during the epidemic. When the cafeteria and surrounding restaurants were closed, they had to eat fast food such as instant noodles continuously for more than 20 days. So, they were able to continue the work on keeping the indoor population of FAW, and successive reproduction, mass rearing, and indoor biological research of the parasitic wasps. To avoid close contact between members of the research team during epidemic, they took the initiative to undertake successive feeding and popula-tion conservation of four other important pests, laying a solid foundation for the smooth development of subsequent scientific research.
In order to apply the natural enemy parasitic wasps as soon as possible to control FAW in the field, and to effectively curb the continuous damage of FAW, it was an urgent task to carry out the research work on mass rearing techniques of parasitic wasp and evaluate the parasitic ability on FAW. Dr. Guo Jingfei is one of the first batch of researchers who were sent to the MARA-CABI European Laboratory to carry out a three-month collaborative work on the biological control of FAW. After returning to IPP-CAAS in early January 2020, she voluntarily gave up the opportunity for family reunion during the Chinese Spring Festival holidays and stayed at work to summarize and verify the imported experi-ence and technology on FAW biological control. She remained at the post from the eve to the second day of the Chinese New Year, and sorted out the mass rearing techniques of FAW and two parasitic bees originated from America. To help the graduate students who remained in the lab, she communicated with them through phone calls, and online chat-ting tools to provide guidance on improvement and optimization of the feeding methods of FAW and the wasp bees, which effectively enhanced the indoor rearing efficiency of FAW and the cocooning rate of native parasitic wasp larvae.
In order to develop and screen for highly efficient chemical pesticides and the dosage forms for the control of FAW. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Cui Li continued her work on indoor pesticide screen-ing tests for FAW during the epidemic. She found out a combination of agents with sys-temic and synergistic effects, and developed a type of seed coating agent. The indoor test showed this agent had relatively good control effect on FAW, which was submitted for inven-tion patent application. At present, she was working on the optimization of seed coating formulations, evaluation of the treatment effect of seed coating agents on FAW at the seedling stage of maize and wheat. Once the epidemic situation eases, she will go to Guangxi and Yunnan to conduct field validation and verification tests.
