author(s)
RP Maurya, L Brijwal, P Suyal, H Patwal and MK Singh

abstract
Fall armyworm, Spodoptera frugiperda (J.E. Smith) is a noxious lepidopterous pest of maize crop. Northern region of India was devoid from incidences of S. frugiperda until now in 2019 it has been observed in Uttarakhand state for the first time at N.E.B. Corp Research Center, GBPUA&T Pantnagar, Udham Singh Nagar during the routine survey in the maize field. The morphological and molecular tools were used for the identification of the Pantnagar pest sample. The mtCOI gene was used as molecular marker and it was found that the Pantnagar sample sequence showed 100% similarity after BLAST with the sequence accession No. GU095403.1 (658 bp) and MH704433 (658bp) of S. frugiperda from Canada and Karnataka (India), respectively. The mtCOI consensus sequences generated for Pantnagar sample of 630 bp has been deposited in National Centre for Biotechnology Information GenBank databases as S. frugiperda sequence of Pantnagar sample. Morphological and molecular characterization of Pantnagar pest sample marked the conformity of the pest being S. frugiperda (J.E. Smith) which is reported for the first time from Uttarakhand state.