Morphological identification of cucurbitaceous fruit flies in Bihar and genetic diversity of Bactrocera cucurbitae
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Date
2017-07
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Department of Entomology, BAU, Sabour
Abstract
Cucurbits are the major vegetable crops belonging to the family Cucurbitaceae, primarily comprising species consumed as food worldwide. The family consists of about 118 genera and 825 species (Prabhakar et al., 2012). In Bihar major growing cucurbits including bottle gourd, pointed gourd, bitter gourd and ash gourd. The production of cucurbits is hindered due to several factors like insect pests and diseases and out of those; fruit flies are one of the major limiting factor of cucurbits production occurring not only in Bihar but also in India. In India, fruit flies have been identified as one of the ten most serious problems of agriculture, because of their polyphagous nature and causes a huge economic loss to fruits and vegetables which varies from 2.50 -100 per cent depending upon the crop and season (Dhillon et al., 2005). There are approximately 4,500 species of fruit flies (Tephritidae) represented one of the largest families of Diptera and at around 243 species of fruit flies were recorded from India (Agarwal and Sueyoshi, 2005). Among those, Bactrocera cucurbitae, B. tau and Dacus ciliatus are the most diverse. Fruit flies are indeed the excellent candidates for studies on biodiversity, adaptability in changing climate and invasion to new areas because of their capability of flying long distances, polyphagous in nature, vast host range, homoplasmy in taxonomic characters, high reproductive potential, wide range of distribution due to their high adaptability and great economic importance as a pest. Proper insect pests’ management leads to better production in agroecosystem and a better management practice not supposed to be completed without proper identification of a particular pest. Therefore, the present investigation was conducted to study the morphological identification of predominant cucurbitaceous fruit flies and to find out the genetic diversity of Bactrocera cucurbitae through gene specific marker.
After a roving survey at four different agroclimatic zones of Bihar, it was observed that a total of six major fruit fly species associated with cucurbitaceous crops viz. Bactrocera. (Zeugodacus) cucurbitae (Coquillett), B. (Z.) tau (Walker), B. (Z.) caudata (Fabricius), B. (Bactrocera) nigrofemoralis White & Tsuruta, B. (Hemigymnodacus) diversa (Coquillett) and Dacus (Didacus) ciliates Loew. Their distribution pattern in different agroclimatic zones with their associated hosts was also recorded. The collected fruit fly species were identified taxonomically according to keys provided by White and Elson-Harris, 1992 and Drew and Raghu, 2002. Significant achievements of our studies were i. Bactrocera (Bactrocera) nigrofemoralis White & Tsuruta will be the first report from Bihar as new fruit fly species and also identified new host of Dacus (Didacus) ciliatus Loew, Bactrocera (Hemigymnodacus) diversa (Coquillett) from pointed gourd and flowers of Cucurbita moschata respectively. On the basis of amplified PCR product of DNA of B. cucurbitae, the expected product length of MCOX-I gene was 700 bp and the product obtained was nearly between 700 to 750 bp. The expected product length of MCOX-II gene was 600 bp and the product obtained was nearly between 500 to 600 bp. It revealed that there were not much difference in the banding pattern but very small difference noticed in the bands and which would be helpful for future studies in molecular diversity analysis after getting complete sequencing.
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