Genetic diversity of pink bollworm Pectinophora Gossypiella (Saunders) populations

Present study was conducted to determine the genetic diversity of Pectinophora gossypiella (Saunders) larvae collected from different cotton growing regions of India by RAPD-PCR analysis. RAPD decamer primers viz., OPI-11 to OPI-20 were used out of which four (OPI-11-OPI-14) produced amplicon of good resolution and sufficient variation. A total of 153 amplicons produced out of which 118 (92%) are polymorphic bands indicating high genetic polymorphism among the P. gossypiella populations. The similarity coefficient values ranged from 0.20 to 0.76 for the pair-wise combination among twelve populations of P. gossypiella. An UPGMA dendrogram generated based on Jaccard's similarity coefficient for 12 populations grouped into two clusters. Minimum similarity (0.20) was observed between LAB and GJJ populations. The present investigation shows occurrence of high genetic polymorphism and low genetic diversity among the P. gossypiella populations in India.