Following the period of water stress, the plants were artifi-cially infested with E. saccharina eggs on 2 November 1998.The eggs were laid on paper towelling by moths reared inthe SASEX Insect Rearing Unit. Batches of approximately100 eggs were counted and cut out, then placed behind alower leaf sheath of two stalks in every pot. Each pot there-fore received about 200 eggs. Eldana saccharina preferen-tially lays its eggs in protected positions on dead leafmaterial near the base of the stalk (Atkinson, 1980); thus,the site of stalk inoculation with eggs resembled the naturalone. Hatching larvae were allowed to develop over 41 days,a period equivalent to 500 accumulated degree-days underthe prevailing temperatures, with a developmental thresholdtemperature of 10C. This ensured that most larvae haddeveloped to the fifth or sixth instar, or had pupated (Way,1995), by the time of trial harvest. Degree-days wereaccumulated using Tempest