Genetic differences in DNA barcode region of different geographical populations of citrus leaf miner, Phyllocnistis citrella stainton

The citrus leaf miner populations were collected from citrus nursery in Gurdaspur and Abohar regions of Punjab. The mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (mtCOI) gene was amplifed using specifc primers, cloned and nucleotide sequence was determined. Both leaf miner populations were identifed as Phyllocnistis citrella based on 99 to 100 per cent sequence homology using BLASTn. The multiple alignments of both the sequences revealed only one substitution of “C” instead of “T” at 499th position in Gurdaspur population. Nineteen mtCOI sequences (USA:15, Spain:2, Japan:2) were downloaded from NCBI database. The phylogenetic tree was developed which indicated that the population of Abohar is 100 per cent similar to one of the populations of Spain and difer from Florida and Valencia (Spain) by 0.15 and 0.48 per cent from Japan populations. The Gurdaspur population showed genetic diversity of 0.15per cent from that of Spain and USA, and 0.23per cent from Japan populations. The maximum variation observed among the diferent test populations of India, USA, Japan and Spain is 0.53 per cent.