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Since fall armyworm (FAW) was discovered in Central and Western Africa in 2016, it has infested fields all over the continent except for a handful countries. Anxious farmers and their support agencies, who are unfamiliar with managing this new pest, have all too often turned to pesticides, a response that is neither economically nor ecologically viable, especially in the smallholder context and poses risk to human health. Instead, a much more sustainable and ecologically based solution was shown to researchers from Cabo Verde’s National Institute of Agricultural Research and Development (INIDA) and Mozambique’s Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MASA) by experts from Brazil’s Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa): A tiny wasp – Trichogramma spp.– can be used to tackle the large problem of FAW pest infesting fields on the African continent and beyond.

During Embrapa’s July 2019 workshop Fall armyworm and its management with sustainable technologies for African countries in Sete Lagoas in eastern Brazil, African delegates, working in the research centre’s bio-factory, learned how to produce the Trichogramma spp. This egg parasitic wasp lives exclusively on the eggs of various pests, including FAW, which makes the wasp an efficient, low-cost, and easily produced ‘technology’ to help fight against the FAW in Africa. Delegates were also trained on how they can set up bio-factory facilities in their home countries to produce Trichogramma. That is a much more successful and practical solution to FAW than applying chemical pesticides.

“Workshop participants can assist research and extension organizations in their home countries to ensure that this new knowledge of biological control can be spread,” organizers say. Such sharing of knowledge demonstrates the importance of FAO’s South–South cooperation programme in FAW management knowledge transfer. Research institutions, universities and extension agencies and companies “have joined forces to fight FAW in Africa,” said Hipólito Alberto Eduardo Malia, an entomologist at the Institute of Agricultural Research of Mozambique. “Basically, we researchers want to know what Embrapa already does to control this pest. Now, with this training, we are able to survey Mozambique's needs and start assembling FAW natural enemies,” he said during the July 2019 training workshop. 

The Sete Lagoas event built on an earlier, FAO-sponsored training workshop on biological control of FAW that was held in Praia, Cabo Verde in May 2019. Led by entomologist Ivan Cruz of Embrapa, that workshop was supported by the African Development Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development. The two workshops have been instrumental in the establishment of a new laboratory for the production of the Trichogramma spp. in Praia.