ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Hortic.
Sec. Sustainable Pest and Disease Management
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fhort.2025.1548497
Spodoptera frugiperda Smith fitness on four natural hosts using a two-sex life table in a controlled setting
Provisionally accepted
- 1China Agricultural University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China
- 2Faculty of Sciences, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Punjab, Pakistan
- 3Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences (GDAAS), Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China
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Spodoptera frugiperda (J.E. Smith), (Noctuidae, Lepidoptera), commonly known as fall armyworm (FAW), is a significant polyphagous pest that can cause considerable damage to various crops. Fundamental research on FAW is crucial and beneficial for creating an integrated management strategy. Lot of literatures are available on web to describe the fitness of FAW via conventional methods that deals the basic biology of FAW. However, there is currently a need to check the fitness for each stage of FAW using an advanced two-sex life table tool, which is crucial for creating efficient control strategies. The proposed study used an age-stage, two-sex life table to examine the lifetable parameters of FAW on four natural hosts: castor beans (Ricinus communis), potatoes (Solanum tuberosum), maize (Zea mays L.), and wheat (Triticum aestivium L.). The findings demonstrated that, despite notable variations in development and reproduction, the FAW completed its life cycle on each of the four studied hosts. The FAW that were fed maize performed at their best, showing shorter immature (egg-pupa) phases, longer lifespans, and better rates of adult reproduction. On maize, female FAW had the highest fecundity (2497.1 eggs/female), while on wheat, it was the lowest (675 eggs/female). With values of 532.8 (offspring individual-1), 0.21d -1 , and 1.23 d -1 , respectively, net reproductive rate, intrinsic rate of increase, and finite rate of increase peaked on maize, while the corresponding parameters were lowest on wheat (94.62 offspring individual -1 , 0.11 d -1 , and 1.12 d -1 , respectively). This study indicates that all host plants can contribute to the development and outbreak of this pest in the absence of its primary host. Therefore, all potential host plants in the area should be thoroughly examined when developing an IPM program against said pest.
Keywords: Age-stage two-sex life table, Castor, fall armyworm, Potato, Reproduction, Spodoptera frugiperda, And survival
Received: 20 Dec 2024; Accepted: 26 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Tajdar, Cao, Jaleel, Zaka and Wangpeng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dr. Waqar Jaleel, Faculty of Sciences, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Punjab, Pakistan
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