🐛 How to do a destructive sample for fall armyworm (FAW) #GRDC

To do a really effective destructive sample I guess you need to pull the plant out of the ground. For the most part fall army worm are confined to that whorl and the upper leaves. So I guess the way we go about it because we want to know whether there are eggs and whether there are small larvae and whether there are bigger larvae. So you know you sort of examine the plant looking for eggs which will largely be under the leaves and then you can just pull the lower leaves away, break the whorl off and unfurl that and the larvae can be anywhere in those leaves that are that make up the whorl in the assess that I do largely I won't count the very small larvae. The mortality of those small larvae is likely to be extremely high. Fall armyworm is one of those pests where to make good decisions about what the loss might be going forward. You're really interested in which larvae are establishing so that are medium or bigger.