Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

MOLECULAR CHARACTERIZATION OF HELICOVERPA ARMIGERA (HUBNER) POPULATIONS FROM PUNJAB, INDIA

Arshdeep K. Gill, Ramesh Arora and Vikas Jindal

Abstract

Helicoverpa armigera Hubner (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) is a highly polyphagous and migratory pest of several economically important crops in parts of Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. Molecular variability of H. armigera infesting different crops viz. non-Bt cotton, pigeon pea, Egyptian clover, sunflower and tomato mostly from the areas near Ludhiana, Punjab, India and inter-location variability on Egyptian clover across three agroclimatic zones of Punjab was studied by mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I sequence alignments. Based on sequence analysis of mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I gene, the Ludhiana population differed from Gurdaspur population by the 0.2% and from Abohar population by 0.5% while the latter two differed from each other by 0.7%. Among populations infesting various host plants, cotton population differed from sunflower by 0.2%, Egyptian clover by 0.3% and tomato and pigeon pea by 0.4% suggesting little genetic variation among populations collected from different regions of Punjab and infesting various hosts.