Abstract

HERRERA-VASQUEZ, José Ángel  and  BARBA-ALVARADO, Anovel Amet. Identification of Thrips palmi Karny (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) in cucurbit crops in  Panama. Agron. Mesoam [online]. 2013, vol.24, n.1, pp.47-55. ISSN 2215-3608.

The objective of  this  work  includes  the  morphological  and  molecular identification of T. palmi in cucurbit crops in Panama. The specimens were collected from the provinces of Los Santos, Herrera, Coclé, Veraguas and Chiriquí, from  February 17th of 2009 until August 17^th of 2010. The insects identification was realized at the Laboratory of Plant Protection (LPV), of Agricultural Research Center Central (CIAC), of Agricultural Research Institute of Panama (IDIAP), located in Los Canelos, Santa María district, Herrera province, Panama. The specimens were identified by morphology using the taxonomic keys. The polymerase chain reaction  (PCR) was used with T. palmi specific-primers,  which amplify the mitochondrial gene  cytochrome  oxidase  subunit  I  (mtCOI).  Amplicons (PCR  products) of the expected size (220-bp) were obtained from T. palmi. Furthermore, an amplified  product was purified and sequenced. To verify the identity of the insect, the sequence obtained from it was analyzed using the Basic Local Alignment Search (BLAST) and compared with reference sequences from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).

Keywords : taxonomic keys; specific-primers; morphological  identification; molecular   identification; PCR; sequencing.

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