By CAITLIN CROWLEY
SUMMER sorghum crops in Central and Southern Queensland have been under attack from a sudden and severe invasion of Fall armyworm at a scale never seen before.
Biloela farmer Scott Muller told the Caller areas where growers had never worried about Fall armyworm before had been “belted” by the invasive pest in recent weeks, catching many off guard.
While Central Queensland growers were familiar with the introduced species targeting corn crops in the last four years, Muller said their numbers in sorghum crops had “exploded” this season.
“It’s definitely the worst we’ve ever seen,” Muller said.
“We’ve always seen a little bit of armyworm damage in sorghum in years gone by, but never enough to have thresholds that we need to spray, or potentially desiccating crops so it’s just another kick in the guts.”
Looking across Muller’s fields of sorghum at Biloela, it’s easy to see the damage caused by the voracious species, leaving lush sorghum leaves shredded as though they’d been hit by a hail storm.
“This crop we sprayed two weeks ago approximately and it was really affected, there was a lot of numbers – four, five, six grubs per plant, let alone per metre,” Muller said.
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“I think we did a 70 or 80 percent job in getting rid of those, and it helped that plant get away but even looking now here, there are two or three grubs per plant again.
“So you’ve just got to make a choice around how much it’s going to cost you, dollars per hectare on the other end.”
Muller, who is also Agforce Grains Vice President, said farmers had already given up growing corn in his patch because of Fall armyworm, and had been left wondering what the future looked like for growing sorghum.
“It honestly is a worry,” Muller said, “sorghum is such a common crop in CQ in summer, I think there are a lot of people that are a little bit worried.”
Fall armyworm was first detected on the Australian mainland in February 2020 and according to Queensland’s Department of Agriculture, has now spread across much of northern and eastern Australia.