Journal 
The European pepper moth Duponchelia fovealis Zeller (Lepidoptera: Crambidae) is a very harmful phytophagous pest that attacks 73 host plants including ornamental and horticultural plants (Zawadneak et al., 2015). This pest is native to the Mediterranean region and the Canary Islands and was first reported on ornamental plants greenhouse in Netherlands (Huisman and Koster, 1992). It has been widespread throughout the world including Europe, U.S.A., the Middle East, Africa, Turkey and Canada, recently (Efil et al., 2011).
On June 30 2015, following farmer’s diagnosis request, we visited to a Euphorbia milii greenhouse located in Gwongju-si, Gyeonggi-do, the south Korea and found individuals of lepidopteran larvae near the soil surface and their damages on stem (Fig. 1). The rate of damaged plants was about 30%. We recommended emamectin-benzoate EC (5%) for controlling this pest, and we could not find any damage anymore at the field. On July 14 2016, a farmer who was cultivating Schlumbergera truncata in Yongin-si requested to visit and to diagnose the unseen damage. We found individuals of lepidopteran larva damaging leaves (Fig. 2) and the farmer immediately sprayed indoxacarb WP (10%) for control the pest. Two weeks later, we visited the greenhouse but could not find any damage anymore. The emerging adult (Fig. 3) from the larvae we collected was identified by the second author as an exotic insect pest, D. fovealis in Korea for the first time.
We could not discover this pest in Gyeonggi-do at present, but it needs to be monitored consistently for economic horticultural crops including ornamental plants, pepper, lettuce etc.
KSAE
