Fall Armyworm Case Study

According to (FAO ,2017), the fall armyworm of maize is an insect which nourishes on the maize crops and have the potential of habitating an area on their arrival and this species can move long distances over a year mostly in the summer seasons.
(FAOSTAT, 2013) stated that Maize (Zea Mays L.) crops is an important crop of agriculture in southern Africa, because large number of African populations depend on maize crops for their livelihood in both the rural and the urban areas. This adverse effect of the fall armyworm causes the loss of crop production, decrease in the economy of the country, and with this challenge of the fall armyworm, commercial and substantial farmers of maize crops will lose their yield production as a result worker will
The spatial distribution of the fall armyworm can be assessed using environmental and climatic variables such as elevation, slope, rainfall and temperature, and also the NDVI of Waterberg district (Ibrahim, 2017). Modelling of spatial distribution of the fall armyworm is necessary because it enables us to monitor and evaluate farms crop conditions with best accuracy and precision and as a strategy to manage the crop diseases, however, managing the pest attacks on crops is very expensive but with the use of GIS and Remote Sensing we can minimize the costs as we can predict the environmental and climatic variables that are good for cropping the maize crop without being attacked by the fall armyworm (Prof. Heinrichs, 2017). Assessing the factors that influences the spatial distribution of fall armyworm of maize is very complicated since it’s not influenced by one factor but by both environmental and climatic factors (Smith,
2005)

According to (DAFF,2016) the spread of the fall armyworm originates from the
Problem statement
Fall armyworm is an insect pest that has been widely affecting the maize production in
Waterberg District, Limpopo. Fall armyworm is an invasive species in Africa, it originates in America. This wide outbreak of armyworm in south Africa started back in
2016 and it has damaged much of farming maize crops in Limpopo especially in
Waterberg District. As a result, the economy suffers widely as the agricultural production of maize is decreased. According to (Ibrahim et al, 2017) This wide spread of fall armyworm has reduced the number of maize production as compared to years back.
Monitoring equipment’s were placed in farms around Waterberg District and it was found that more fall armyworm is found during spring season while they number decreases summer and few fall armyworms are found in winter season because of its cold weather condition (Dennis, 2017). Fall armyworm has been causing diseases in crops and damage the cereal production. The effect of fall armyworm on farms is that