Exploration of gut bacteria in white grub Anomala sp. (Coleoptera : Scarabaeidae)‎, a major pest of vegetables and fruit trees in India

Abstract EN

White grubs are among the most destructive pests living in the soils causing severe economic loss to most of the agriculturally important crops.

An attempt was made in the present study to isolate the gut bacterial communities of white grub, Anomala sp.

(Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) collected from citrus trees soil.

A culture based approach was deployed for exploring the diversity of gut bacterial isolates in this pest.

About 24 bacterial species were isolated from the gut of this insect by using diverse growth media and generic identification of the same was done based on 16s ribosomal RNA gene identification method.

The proportional distribution of the gut bacteria revealed that bacterium Ochrobactrum sp.

(25 %) was the most dominant one followed by Bacillus (21 %), Citrobacter (21 %), Pseudomonas (17 %), Enterobacter (8%) and Paenibacillus (8%).

Phylogenetic association between these gut bacterial isolates, their possible functional role and scope and utility of these gut bacterial isolates in pest management have been discussed in this work.