Evaluation of farmers friendly IPM modules for the management of fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (JE Smith) in maize in the hot semiarid region of India.

Invasive alien species (IAS) pose a severe threat to global agriculture, with their impact projected to escalate due to climate change and expanding international trade. The fall armyworm (FAW), Spodoptera frugiperda (J. E. Smith), a native of the Americas, has rapidly spread across various continents, causing significant damage to several food crops, especially maize. Integrated pest management (IPM) programs are vital for sustainable FAW control, combining multiple strategies for sustainable results. Over three consecutive years, 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22, the field demonstrations were conducted in semiarid regions of India, testing a four-component IPM approach viz., pheromone traps, microbial, botanicals and ETL based applications of insecticides against farmers' practices (sole insecticide application). IPM implementation led to substantial reductions in FAW infestation. Furthermore, egg mass and larvae infestations were significantly lower in IPM-adopted villages compared to conventional practices. Pheromone-based monitoring demonstrated a consistent reduction in adult moth populations. The lowest technology gap (10.42), extension gap (8.33) and technology index (12.25) was recorded during 2020-21. The adoption of IPM led to increased maize yields (17.49, 12.62 and 24.87% over control), higher net returns (919, 906.20 and 992.93 USD), and favourable benefit-cost ratios (2.74, 2.39 and 2.33) compared to conventional practices respectively during 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22. The economic viability of IPM strategies was evident across three consecutive years, confirming their potential for sustainable FAW management in the semiarid region of India. These strategies hold promise for adoption in other parts of the world sharing similar climatic conditions.

Fungal Endophytes to Combat Biotic and Abiotic Stresses for Climate-Smart and Sustainable Agriculture.

The agricultural sustainability concept considers higher food production combating biotic and abiotic stresses, socio-economic well-being, and environmental conservation. On the contrary, global warming-led climatic changes have appalling consequences on agriculture, generating shifting rainfall patterns, high temperature, CO2, drought, etc., prompting abiotic stress conditions for plants. Such stresses abandon the plants to thrive, demoting food productivity and ultimately hampering food security. Though environmental issues are natural and cannot be regulated, plants can still be enabled to endure these abnormal abiotic conditions, reinforcing the stress resilience in an eco-friendly fashion by incorporating fungal endophytes. Endophytic fungi are a group of subtle, non-pathogenic microorganisms establishing a mutualistic association with diverse plant species. Their varied association with the host plant under dynamic environments boosts the endogenic tolerance mechanism of the host plant against various stresses via overall modulations of local and systemic mechanisms accompanied by higher antioxidants secretion, ample enough to scavenge Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) hence, coping over-expression of defensive redox regulatory system of host plant as an aversion to stressed condition. They are also reported to ameliorate plants toward biotic stress mitigation and elevate phytohormone levels forging them worthy enough to be used as biocontrol agents and as biofertilizers against various pathogens, promoting crop improvement and soil improvement, respectively. This review summarizes the present-day conception of the endophytic fungi, their diversity in various crops, and the molecular mechanism behind abiotic and biotic resistance prompting climate-resilient aided sustainable agriculture.