Scirpophaga is a genus of moths of the family Crambidae described by Georg Friedrich Treitschke in 1832.

[2] During most of history this genus has been completely confused, with most specimens being wrongly identified and most taxa being based on a type series containing numerous species.

[2] Almost two centuries after the first species was described, in 1960 the Australian entomologist Ian Francis Bell Common was the first to examine the genitalia (for centuries the standard method by which one determines species in Lepidoptera) of the Australian specimens in this group, recombining and splitting the then defined genera into a number of new genera.

He created the new genus Tryporyza, in which he incorporated two species: Chilo incertulas and Tipanaea innotata[3] (of which DNA research in 2019 has shown should be synonymised with Scirpophaga nivella).

[4] In 1980 P. Wang also classified Scirpophaga nivella within the genus Tryporyza,[5] only to have Angoon Lewvanich, after an exhaustive study of the genitals of over 6000 specimens from throughout the range of the group, to retire the genus Tryporyza as a synonym of Scirpophaga in the following year (1981).