Identification of Whitefly Speciesin Seletedfruit Crops Grown in The BATTICALOA District

Abstract

Whitefly (Family: Aleyrodidae) is one of the major detrimental pests in the world, causing yield losses and economic injury to many crop species. It is a serious insect pest in the Battticaloa district of Sri Lanka which attacks numerous fruit crops, vegetables, ornamental, medicinal and wild crops. High infestation by whitefly ultimately causes death of the host plant. It is believed that the chemical control against this pest is to be a serious one because of the development of resistance and destruction of the natural enemies. Several previous studies showed that there are many natural enemies found in the eco-system to maintain the population of this pest below the economic threshold level. Therefore biological control of whitefly on fruit crops becomes important to manage this pest. In addition, fruits are being consumed freshly and the toxicity adheres with the fruits lead for biomagnification of insecticide in human. The increasing demand for insecticide free products and self defense of consumers for toxicity of insecticides force the cultivators to take bio-control strategy to minimize the whitefly outbreaks by using parasitoids. Parasitoids are species specific and the effective controlof whiteflies is only attained by the correct identification of whiteflyspecies. Banana and guava fruit crops were included as the host-plant of whitefly in the study period. Whitefly infested leaves were collected from which non-parasitized pupae and pupal exuviae were separated to identify the whiteflies species. Morphological characteristics were recorded to identify the whitefly species. Spiraling whitefly (Aleurodicus dispersus) species were identified as the pest of banana and guava