Abstract:
Identification of the species complex of a pest is necessary in an alien pest invasion.
As whiteflies have not been widely reported in coconut in Sri Lanka, identification
of the whitefly species is important. The present study was conducted for the
molecular identification of the whitefly species in coconut in Sri Lanka. Whiteflies
were collected from Gampaha district and were morphologically identified. Then the
total Genomic deoxyribonucleic acid (gDNA) was extracted separately from them
using the Cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) method. The extracted DNA
were subjected to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using universal DNA primer
pairs; LCO 1490 and HCO 2198. Amplification of partial mitochondrial cytochrome
c oxidase subunit 1 (mtCOI) genes of total genomic DNA resulted in PCR product
with a size of 658 bp and all the sequences were bidirectional Sanger sequenced. All
the sequences were subjected to Nucleotide BLAST (BLASTn) similarity search
through National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and found that they
were 99-100% matched with the species identified morphologically. The species
were Aleurodicus rugioperculatus, Paraleyrodes minei, Aleurotrachelus atratus and
Aleurodicus disperses. The species A. rugioperculatus, P. minei and A. atratus are
reported for the first time in Sri Lanka. The invasion of these new whitefly species
possesses a potential threat to the agriculture sector owing to its polyphagous nature
and their rapid dispersing ability.
