Description of Infection Symptoms in Armyworm Larvae (Spodoptera litura F.) by The Insect Pathogen Beauveria bassiana (Bals.)

Armyworm (Spodoptera litura F.) is an important leaf pest of
cabbage, shallots, mustard greens, and cabbage (Uge et al., 2021). It’s attack causes a decrease in production to reach 100%, if no control is carried out (Moekasan et al., 2020). One of the insect pathogenic fungi that potential as a biological control agent is Beauveria bassiana Bals. (Marni
et al., 2018). This study aims to determine the symptoms of infection with morphological changes in armyworm larvae caused by B. bassiana, carried out at the Agrotechnology Laboratory of the Muhammadiyah University of Parepare. The method used is descriptive analytic, which describes the
results of research based on observations from the documentation made on a camera microscope. The results showed that the first and second day observations did not show any signs of infection, but on the third to seventh day there were signs of infection in the form of morphological
changes such as changes in the body color of the larvae from green to yellowish, then brown to black. The structure and body shape of the larvae experienced shrinkage, softened then hardened and finally mummified, the larval body was also seen to be overgrown with white hyphae