Maize is a staple food crop for many subsistence farmers. Destructive pests have emerged causing crop losses.The cheering news is that scientists have developed disease-resistant varieties of maize.

When maize fields become too crowded, the plants signal each other to boost their defenses. A research team led by Dongsheng Guo of Zhejiang University found that in crowded conditions, maize plants ...

Two species of insects that can fight major maize pests have been discovered in Kenya. The species named Cotesia Icipe and Cotesia typhae were discovered after years of research in Kenya by ...

The western corn rootworm continues to be on the rise in Europe. Why attempts to biologically target this crop pest by applying entomopathogenic nematodes have failed, can now be explained by the ...

The Federal Government and the research community have stepped up efforts to contain a maize disease threatening food security. Ogun State Agricultural Development Programme (ADP) had reported cases ...

Fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda) is an invasive agricultural pest, which first hit West Africa in 2016 and quickly spread across the continent. Experts have now found that the pest’s impact on ...

Almost all of Africa's maize crop is at risk from the devastating fall armyworm pest (Spodoptera frugiperda) according to new research. Scientists have highlighted how almost the entire African maize ...

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an ecosystem approach that combines different approaches to control pests. It minimizes risks to the environment and people. Through scouting, the farmer must ...

The western corn rootworm, one of the world's most damaging maize pests, can use plant defense compounds to defend itself against its own natural enemies, so-called entomopathogenic nematodes. However ...

Tissue structure alterations caused by infection are visible under a microscope (center). When Arabidopsis thaliana (right) forms the fungal effector protein Tip4, gall-like accumulations of ...