The Council of Agriculture yesterday launched a new round of compulsory measures to prevent the spread of fall armyworms that involve spraying pesticide in all areas where they have been sighted.
Twenty-one new sightings of the pest were reported from Friday to Monday in the outlying islands of Kinmen, Matsu and Penghu, as well as in Hsinchu, Miaoli, Chiayi, Pingtung and Hualien counties on Taiwan proper, a council task force responsible for eliminating the insects said, adding that eggs and pupae have been found.
A total of 68 of the larval form of the pest have been sighted nationwide since the first sighting was confirmed in a corn field in Miaoli County on June 10.
Crops have been uprooted and buried on 28 farms, the task force said.
Only Nantou County and Kaohsiung, as well as Green Island (綠島) and Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼), have not reported sightings, council data showed.
As the time frame to eliminate first-generation larvae comes to an end and additional sightings have been reported, the task force announced a second round of measures: destroying eggs, pupae and moths with pesticide.
Officials are also educating farmers on the appearance of the eggs, larvae, pupae and moths, and asking them to immediately report any sightings to the authorities.
They have also deployed 500 pheromone traps nationwide.
Fall armyworms, so named as they crawl in large numbers from field to field after exhausting their food supply, have a life cycle of about 30 days, in which they go through four stages: egg, larva, pupa and moth.
Fall armyworm eggs measure about 0.4mm by 0.3mm, and the pupa is reddish brown in color and measures 14mm to 18mm long and about 4.5mm wide.
The moth has a wingspan of 32mm. Male moths have gray-and-brown forewings, with triangular white markings at the tip and near the center.
The forewings of female moths range from a uniform grayish brown to a fine mottling of gray and brown.
The hind wings in both sexes are iridescent silver-white with a narrow dark border.
The council is offering a reward of NT$10,000 to people who make a confirmed report of the pest until tomorrow.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Taiwan is to have nine extended holidays next year, led by a nine-day Lunar New Year break, the Cabinet announced yesterday. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday next year matches the length of this year’s holiday, which featured six extended holidays. The increase in extended holidays is due to the Act on the Implementation of Commemorative and Festival Holidays (紀念日及節日實施條例), which was passed early last month with support from the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party. Under the new act, the day before Lunar New Year’s Eve is also a national holiday, and Labor Day would no longer be limited
COMMITMENTS: The company had a relatively low renewable ratio at 56 percent and did not have any goal to achieve 100 percent renewable energy, the report said Pegatron Corp ranked the lowest among five major final assembly suppliers in progressing toward Apple Inc’s commitment to be 100 percent carbon neutral by 2030, a Greenpeace East Asia report said yesterday. While Apple has set the goal of using 100 percent renewable energy across its entire business, supply chain and product lifecycle by 2030, carbon emissions from electronics manufacturing are rising globally due to increased energy consumption, it said. Given that carbon emissions from its supply chain accounted for more than half of its total emissions last year, Greenpeace East Asia evaluated the green transition performance of Apple’s five largest final
The first tropical storm of the year in the western North Pacific, Wutip (蝴蝶), has formed over the South China Sea and is expected to move toward Hainan Island off southern China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. The agency said a tropical depression over waters near the Paracel and Zhongsha islands strengthened into a tropical storm this morning. The storm had maximum sustained winds near its center of 64.8kph, with peak gusts reaching 90kph, it said. Winds at Beaufort scale level 7 — ranging from 50kph to 61.5kph — extended up to 80km from the center, it added. Forecaster Kuan Hsin-ping
RSS