BEIJING (Reuters) - China has found the destructive fall armyworm in the major corn-producing province of Shandong in the north, the government-backed Beijing News reported on Monday.
The pest, first detected in the southwestern province of Yunnan in early January, has spread to Shandong but has not damaged crops in the northern province, Beijing News reported, citing an expert from a government think tank.
Shandong is the third-largest corn producer in the country, after Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces in the northeastern cornbelt region.
China had about 130 million hectares of arable land as of the end of 2017 and grows corn on about 42 million hectares.
(Reporting by Hallie Gu and Dominique Patton; Editing by Joseph Radford)
