My name is Ken Wilson and I'm a Professor of Evolutionary Ecology at Lancaster University
and I'm particularly interested in the interactions between parasites and their hosts, and in
particular insects.
And my favourite insect is this guy here, the African armyworm, 'Spodoptera exempta'.
And I've been working on this insect for about 20 years now and what we've been trying to
do over the past few years is to try to understand the natural interaction between the African
armyworm, a major crop pest throughout sub-Saharan Africa, and it's natural disease virus called
SpexNPV, also known as Spodoptera exempta nuclear polyhedrosis virus, which is why we
call it SpexNPV because it's easier to say.
It's December 21, everybody is getting ready for Christmas, and I am on my way to the airport
to catch a flight to Zambia to assess the food security crisis caused by armyworms.
I've got a busy couple of days ahead of me.
What I am hoping to do is to visit some farmers who have been affected by armyworm, and assess
the impact on food security, I am going to collect some armyworm samples to take back
to the UK for analysis, and if all goes to plan I hope to meet with the Vice President
of the country to discuss the armyworm situation and what can be done about it going forward
and the role that biopesticides might play in the future.
It's about 20 hours flying time to Zambia so it's 20 hours there and 20 hours back and
just 33 hours in the country, so effectively a day and a half to some work.
Well, I've just arrived in Lusaka.
It's pouring with rain outside, pretty wet and miserable, but being in the tropics I'm
sure the rain will go pretty soon and hopefully we'll be able to get out and do some field
work.
We're going to go out into the villages and see what damage armyworm has been caused.
On our way here we've already seen some damage caused to pastoral grasses, which looks pretty
devastating.
We have had a lot of them here just anywhere you see you see them, the armyworms yeah the
armyworms.
So Donald, tell us about this area.
Basically, this whole land was green but the outbreak of these armyworms physically they
are amazing grazers and they've turn the whole land which was green to almost bare, which
is the way it is looking now.
They are brown really.
And these are just reminents because if you had come 4 or 5 days ago when it was all green,
really there were like all the leafs are covered by these armyworms.
Field where armyworms have attacked.
An armyworm that was not so lucky.
This is what the crop should look like.
Next door, however, it is not so good.
This is Annie Matutu and this is her field.
Tell us what you have done with your field.
So this field, it was affected with the armyworms so what we did we buy cypermethrin then we
sprayed all the ground of the field and we dig a trench all around the fields then we
started spraying every day in the evening we sprayed this trench so that the armyworm
can't move into our field and destroy our meals.
So you can see this field is looking nicely before we sprayed.
Is the chemical costly?
Chemical?
It is cypermethrin Does it cost a lot of money?
It was the 150,000 for 2 litres.
Treated with chemicals and not treated with chemicals.
That's all damage caused by armyworms.
Can you show the armyworm?
This is a plate infested with armyworm collected by the children.
So this is Donald my assistant who is carefully picking out pupae of African armyworm so we
can take them back to the UK for scientific analysis.
So it is 8.40pm.
I arrived in Zambia, I have forgotten how many hours ago.
Start again...
It is 6 o'clock in the morning.
I have been here for 24 hours and I am just off to go to see the Vice President to discuss
the armyworm situation and what can be done for it to go forward - exciting.
So that was a very good meeting with the Vice President of Zambia and his staff to discuss
the armyworm crisis and the things that can be done going forward and we also discussed
the use of NPV as a biological control agent for African armyworms.
The Vice President and his team are very keen to do some trials in Zambia with a view to
having NPV available as a biological control agent against armyworms next time they attack.
It's good to see the research paying dividends.
Well here I am at Manchester airport and we are goodness knows how many hours since leaving.
Arrived safe and sound, unfortunately the same can't be said for my bag which apparently
is still stuck in South Africa together with all the samples I collected so it is going
to be a little while yet before I can start analysing those data.
Still, Christmas now.
Well as you can see I got back home safely.
Christmas is upon us.
It's late afternoon on Christmas Eve.
My armyworm samples are still in my suitcase somewhere over the Sahara Desert but it has
been an inspirational trip.
Visiting Mrs Matutu to see the efforts that she is going to to try and project her crops,
her livelihood, her family's food from armyworm, at the moment using conventional pesticides
but who knows in a few years time hopefully available to her will be SpexNPV the biopesticide
we are working on.
Meeting Dr Scott the Vice President of Zambia was also inspirational in the efforts that
his country are doing to try to combat the armyworms in these very unusual times and
it was encouraging to see the level of interest that high level and national level in the
work that we are doing and again hopefully we shall have something available for these
countries to use next time armyworm attack.
It's been a very long weekend over 10,000 miles nearly 40 hours of flying but back home
now in the comfort of my home and it is time to forgot about armyworms and to move on to
thinking about Christmas and getting into the Christmas spirit to drink to the Christmas
spirit and have a mince pie or two.
Merry Christmas.