'We will have to contemplate spraying and once a crop gets to a certain stage, that will mean helicopter spraying which is about $1600 an hour plus other materials, so it's extremely expensive,' he said. Waikato Federated Farmers arable chair Keith Holmes said it was very concerning. 'They were detected, they were sprayed, of course, and then the maize grew through, grew out of that damage. He said other paddocks 'had high numbers and a lot of damage, but they actually grew through it'. 'There were isolated paddocks where corn or maize was at the right growth stage that they got into it early, and probably the crop wasn't monitored properly, as often as it should have been. Stuart Kearns from Plant Health Australia saw the incursion spread from the Torres Strait, through the states, as moths flew huge distances 'upwards of 300, 400 kilometres overnight with the right winds in the transport phase'.īut the damage was done by caterpillars feeding on plant leaves. The moths arrived in Australia in early 2020, and in the worst cases, larvae destroyed entire paddocks. 'That's another pest that's nibbling away at what our livestock would otherwise be eating or what our corn growers would otherwise be producing for humans to eat, and it's easy for these costs to quickly mount into the tens of millions.' If eradication failed, he expected there would be major costs for farmers in the next five to ten years. It does suggest that fall armyworm has a reasonably broad distribution in Waikato and perhaps Bay of Plenty already.'

'And then the incursion that was detected in Waikato more recently, the population development there is reasonably well-advanced, and you would have to think it has been there most of the summer. New Zealand scientists suspect the species flew across the ditch to Aotearoa, but the moths prefer tropical climates and damage is seasonal, so it is possible infestations here will die in winter.ĪgResearch scientist Dr Craig Phillips, from the Better Border Security research collaboration, said it was an 'ominous sign' that the first eggs were found in surveillance trapping in urban Tauranga. The armyworm has destroyed maize and sweetcorn plants in Africa, the United States and Australia. The fall armyworm Spodoptera frugiperda is the name for the pest's larvae.Įggs were found in suburban Tauranga in surveillance traps last month and caterpillars have now been found on two farms in Tamahere, just south of Hamilton.

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