[1] The plants that the armyworm feeds on include a wide range of important vegetables, fruits, and crops.

Other crops damaged include avocado, citrus, peanut, sunflower, velvet bean, tobacco and various flowers.

One of the more preferred host plants is the lima bean, probably due to contact of cyanogenic glycoside linamarin.

[4] When stressed by a lack of food they will eat the apical portions of branches, bore into stem tissue, and attack tubers near the surface of the soil.

There has been growing interest in the agricultural sector in using plant and botanical insecticides as alternatives to restore a biologically base equilibrium in insect populations.

The primary active ingredient in neem is azadirachtin, a steroid-like tetranortriterpenoid, that exhibits a wide range of bioactivity to hundreds of phytophagous insect species from different orders.

There has been shown evidence that neem based products interfere with the regulation of feeding and metabolism as well as with anatomy and function of midgut tissues.

The growth that is disrupted by neem is determined not only by feeding inhibition but also by digestibility, as the S. eridania larvae showed reduced efficiency in converting ingested food.

Neem-based pesticides are exceptional in having broad range of bioactivity against herbivores that include toxicity, growth regulation, repellency, feeding deterrency, and disruption of metamorphosis.

Pure neem oil and azatrol are most effective feeding deterrent for the second and fourth instars of southern armyworm.

Although these products worked in laboratory experiences, it was found that the magnitude of the negative effect on the larval mortality and pupal ecdysis varied considerably among neem-derived insecticides tested.

They are created with insect resistance genes from Bacillus thuringiensis Berliner (Bt-plants) and increasingly being cultivated around the world.

[7] Research has shown that the Bt soybean does not affect pest foliage consumption but does reduce larval duration by around two days.

Larvae fed on fresh ear of field corn that expressed the Bt proteins (Cry1F and Cry1F + Cry1A.105 + Cry2Ab2), showed a 100% mortality rate.

However, these results do show that toxicity is not an inherent trait of even a narrowly defined class of phytochemicals, as minor structural changes within the compound masked reactive sites, which changes solubility and susceptibility of the chemical.

Larvae pupate in the ground soil, at a depth of 5 to 10 cm; pupae are mahogany brown and are about 16–18 mm in length and 5-6mm in width; duration of the pupal period is about 11–13 days.

Berger (1920) reported some success at southern armyworm suppression by application of bran bait containing insecticide.