Caterpillar Helicoverpa armigera is found in Argentina‏

The so feared caterpillar Helicoverpa armigera, known as the corn earworm in North America, was detected on soybean crops in Argentina and already generates worries for the authorities and farm business representatives. Experts from the National Service of Health and Food Quality have been monitoring the presence of the pest for six months. The first occurrence was registered on a sorghum crop in La Cocha, province of Tucumán.

“The development of this caterpillar in our country is unknown, but this is very worrying because it has caused a lot of damage in Paraguay and Brazil”, reads a press release of the government agency. On the other hand, the agency notes that is still early to quantify the already generated damages and the possible dangers.

Some days after, a new case was found hundreds of kilometers away over a cotton crop of Argentina's Institute of Agricultural Technology in Reconquista, north of the Santa Fé province. The caterpillar was identified by agronomist Diego Zwarc.

"In a few weeks of the beginning of the harvest of 2012/2014 season, this new hypothesis is introduced in the light of the presence of this new pest and that with no doubt will be added to the critical forecasts about the weather conditions in the coming months. "If the economic framework of national agricultural production is added, we may have a year that we cannot rest, low risk of living a nightmare in the coming years", says agronomist Enrique Lobos, an Agronomy Professor at the National University of Santiago del Estero.

Agronomist Daniel Igarzábal, an expert on crop protection, a consultant, and Professor at the Catholic University of Córdoba has a similar opinion. "Like any problem, the umbrella must be slowly open before the rains start. We have to take forecasts, even though the guns should not be loaded earlier. First we have to know very well the threat to establish strategies of management".

"The quarantine pests, aliens to our environment, can adapt very differently. But we have very close precedents of Helicoverpa amigera in Paraguay and Brazil. It is a pest similar to the Helicoverpa gelotopoeon and the Heliothis zea. The common translation to English is "African caterpillar" and even though it does not have a common name in our territory, it is expressed in the same way that was done in Brazil, we will call it the oruga brava (the brave caterpillar in spanish)", concludes Igarzábal.