Ghanaian farmers enlist drones to combat fall armyworm invasion

dronespray
Credit: Myjoyonline

Farmers at Janga in the West Mamprusi municipality of the Northern Region [in Ghana] are learning how to use drones and other newly introduced chemicals meant to fight an invasion of fall armyworms in the area. The intervention comes at a time when the worms have wreaked havoc on maize and rice farms.

The exercise was scheduled in response to a recent report by the Daily Graphic that the pest had resurfaced in the Nanumba South District and West Mamprusi municipality, destroying hectares of farms.

RMG Ghana Limited, an agro-input company, which organized the …. exercise …. took farmers through the use of drones, recommended time to spray, and how to apply pesticides that could help fight the worms.

The drones sprayed a hectare of farmland within 15 minutes, compared to the manual knapsack sprayer which often took about three hours to spray the same area of land.

[J]ust 10 minutes after spraying with the new pesticide…. the worms and other insects that were feasting on the crops died and fell off.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on a foreign news website. This summary has been edited for clarity.

Read full, original article: Drones, new chemicals introduced to fight army worms

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