relative growth rate according to the FAW strain, using potted maize plants treated with 10 and 20 g of Si. The results showed that plants treated with Si disturbed the larval growth of FAW larvae only from the corn strain but not from the rice strain. Overall, the corn strain performed better on maize as compared to the rice strain regardless of Si treatment, explaining why it has become the most abundant strain in Africa. Keywords Silicon • Fall armyworm • Rice strain • Corn strain • Maize • Sub-saharan Africa in the Poaceae family (Montezano et al., 2018). In Africa, FAW represents a major threat to food security (Devi, 2018), and since 2018, the pest has infested tens of millions of hectares of maize (FAO, 2018) which is, on the continent, the second main food crop behind cassava in terms of annual production (FAOSTAT, 2020) and the most important cereal crop (FAOSTAT, 2020; IITA, 2020). In the African context, where most