Poonam Dhiman and Mahender Singh Thakur
Abstract
Peaches are highly valued for both their nutritional benefits and economic impact, making them one of the most popular fruits around the world. Peach flowers are pollinated by a diverse range of insect pollinators and their diversity significantly influences the fruit production in Peach crop. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the molecular identification and characterization of different insect pollinators species of Prunus persica (Peach) using mtDNA sequences from the COI barcode dataset. In the present study, 16 species of different insect pollinators were collected and characterized molecularly. The main objectives of this study are to link the morphological and molecular identification of the insect pollinators of Prunus persica in order to find more strategies to conserve these insect pollinators.