Journal of Environmental Biology

Molecular phylogenetic analysis of mango mealybug,

Drosicha mangiferae from Punjab

Geetika Banta, Vikas Jindal*, Bharathi Mohindru, Sachin Sharma, Jaimeet Kaur and V.K. Gupta

Insect Molecular Biology Laboratory, Department of Entomology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana - 141 004, India

Corresponding Author Email: vikas_ento@pau.edu

Publication Data

Paper received:

12 May 2014

Revised received:

13 April 2015

Accepted:

22 April 2015

Abstract

Mealybugs (Hemiptera: Pseudococcidae) are major pests of a wide range of crops and ornamental plants worldwide. Their high degree of morphological similarity makes them difficult to identify and limits their study and management. In the present study, four Indian populations of mango mealybug (mango, litchi, guava from Gurdaspur and mango from Jalandhar) were analyzed. The mtCOI region was amplified, cloned, the nucleotide sequences were determined and analysed. All the four species were found to be D. mangiferae. The population from Litchi and Mango from Gurdaspur showed 100% homologus sequence. The population of Guava-Gurdaspur and Mango-Jalandhar showed a single mutation of 'C' instead of 'T' at 18^th and 196^th position, respectively. Indian populations were compared with populations from Pakistan (21) and Japan (1). The phylogenetic tree resulted in two main clusters. Cluster1 represent all the 4 populations of Punjab, India, 20 of Pakistan (Punjab, Sind, Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad and Karak districts) with homologous sequences. The two population collected from Faisalabad district of Pakistan and Japan made a separate cluster 2 because the gene sequence used in analysis was from the COI-3p region. However, all the other sequence of D. mangiferae samples under study showed a low nucleotide divergence. The homologus mtCO1 sequence of Indian and Pakistan population concluded that the genetic diversity in mealybug population was quite less over a large geographical area.   

 Key words

Diversity, Drosicha mangiferae, Mango mealybug, Phylogenetic tree

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