Dr. Habib Ali

Worldwide, stored products are attacked by a large number of pests resulting in significant economic losses. Among these stored grain pests, khapra beetle, Trogoderma granarium (Everts) (Coleoptera: Dermestidae) is one of the top ranked pests that has ability to survive under diverse climate conditions. The management of this pest is mainly done by using synthetic chemicals which have side effects on consumers, ecosystem and non-target organisms. However, phyto-derivatives were found to be the effective environment friendly alternatives against T. granarium. Therefore, in this review, success of phyto-derivatives against khapra beetle from conventional means to modern research has been critically analyzed, summarized and discussed. In context, the different life stages of the insect starting from egg laying to adult development have been briefly explained. The review focuses upon recent research conducted on the evaluation of dozens of phyto-derivatives. In addition, the article has also highlighted some limitations of plant derived compounds and concludes via hoping that the future formulated pesticides will be safer, economical, least toxic to human and our planet ecosystem.

The study was carried out in eight provinces of China, with 16 different localities. A total of 150 adult dam-selflies were collected for the study from the area. Mitochondrial (COI) was the target gene to sequence from all 51 representative samples of the entire collection. From the resulted sequences, ten species belonging to seven genera and four families were identified. The families are Calopterygidae, Coenagrinidae, Chlorocyphidae and Devadattiade. After alignment through BioEdit v6, MEGA7 was used for phylogenetic tree construction as well as the calculation of genetic divergence, whereas genetic diversity was calculated by DnaSP v5. All species from the respective families had clustered together within the groups, but divided into subgroups. Maximum genetic divergence (9.31%) was found in the genus Rhinocypha, followed by Hetaerina with (8.23%), while, minimum divergence was observed for the genus Ceriagrion (0.32%) followed by Ischnura (0.48%). However, significant genetic diversity was found for all sequences at 346 mutations confirmed by two tests, Tajima's D and Fu's Fs. Maximum genetic diversity among genera was also observed, the genus Hetaerina has maximum genetic diversity (181 mutations) followed by Rhinocypha (68 mutations) while minimum genetic diversity was observed for the genus Ceriagrion followed by Ischnura. The presented results showed a higher diversity of damselflies in the south China regions.

The lepidopteran insect pests have significant importance in vegetable production. The present study was performed to investigate the baseline studies about the assessment of feeding and consumption potential, utilization indices and losses promises of leafworm, Spodoptera litura (Fab.) on Okra. The data regarding feeding potential, food utilization and consumption indices as well as losses of different larval instars were recorded and subjected to appropriate statistical analysis. The results showed that, in the beginning, the approximate digestibility of various instars was increase, e.g. third instar (51.36%-64.03%), fourth instar (63.42%-69.45%) and fifth instar (70.25%-76.10%). However, after a certain period, the digestibility was decreased and efficiency to convert the ingested food into biomass varied significantly. The consumption index values increased with an increase in time but the consumption and growth rate was declined of fourth instar larvae. The ingestion and digestion increased of third (10.01-13.06, 8.32-11.91 mg), fourth (11.27-17.28, 10.96-14.03 mg) and fifth (12.60-19.40, 11.93-15.28 mg) larval instars. The corrected weight of consumed leaves increased with a gain in body weight. However, in the third instar, a decline was observed on the last day of feeding. Maximum leaf area was consumed by fifth instar larvae (44.66 cm 2) followed by fourth (35.41 cm 2) and third (27.98 cm 2) instars. In conclusion, all the dependent parameters, including food utilization potential, consumption indices and losses were higher for fifth instar larvae than others. These results emphasized the re-establishment of fundamental (economic threshold level: ETL, economic injury level: EIL) integrated pest management concepts.

Microbial consortia accompanied to all eukaryotes can be inherited from ancestors, environment, and/or from various food source. Gut microbiota study is an emerging discipline of biological sciences that expands our understanding of the ecological and functional dynamics of gut environments. Microorganisms associated with honey bees play an important role in food digestion, colony performance, immunity, pollination, antagonistic effect against different pathogens, amelioration of food and many more. Although, many repots about honey bee gut microbiota are well documented, microbiome with other key components of honey bees such as larvae, adults, their food (pollen, beebread, and honey), honey combs, and floral nectar are poorly understood. Mutual interactions and extent of the roles of microbial communities associated with honey bees are still unclear and demand for more research on the nutritional physiology and health benefits of this ecologically and economically important group. Here in this study, we highlighted all the honey bee microbiome that harbored from different life stages and other relevant components. The anatomical parts of honey bee (larvae, adults), food source (pollen, beebread, and honey), honey combs, and floral nectar were highly flourished by numerous microorganisms like bacteria (Alphaproteobacteria, Betaproteobacteria, Gammaproteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Actinomycetes, Bacilli, Bacteroidetes, Cocci, Clostridia, Coliforms, Firmicutes, Flavobacteriia, Mollicutes) and fungi (Dothideomycetes, Eurotiomycetes, Mucormycotina, Saccharomycetes, Zygomycetes, Yeasts, Molds). Some distinctive microbial communities of a taxonomically constrained species have coevolved with social bees. This contribution is to enhance the understanding of honey bee gut microbiota, to accelerate bee microbiota and microbiome research in general and to aid design of future experiments in this growing field.

The Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), Diaphorina citri Kuwayama (Hemiptera: Psyllidae) is a devastating pest of Citrus spp. The aim of present study was to investigate the development and mortality of ACP on citrus (Citrus sinensis) (healthy and Huánglóngbìng-(HLB) diseased) and jasmine (Murraya paniculata) plants at various temperatures. Two new Isaria strains were collected from citrus orchards of Fuzhou (China), and HLB-diseased plants were verified by running PCR for 16S gene of Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas). Development observations were recorded for egg, nymph and adult stages on all plants and three different temperatures (20, 25 and 30 °C) whereas mortality observations were recorded for the nymph (fifth instar) and adults on all plants at 25 °C. Field collected Isaria strains were belonged to previously reported Chinese strains under Maximum Parsimony (MP) and Maximum Likelihood methods, as well as, CLas isolates were belonged to previously reported Chinese isolates under MP and Neighbor-Joining methods. The fastest development and mortality was observed on HLB-diseased plants whereas longest time was taken by development and mortality completion on jasmine plants at all temperatures. The fastest developmental times of egg, nymph (first to fourth and fifth instar) and adult stages were ranged from 3.02 to 3.72 d, to 7.63–9.3 d, 5.35–5.65 d and 24.46–28.47 d on HLB-diseased plants at 30-20 °C, respectively. On the other hand, I. javanica caused the fastest mortality of nymphs and adults (32.21 ± 4.47% and 19.33 ± 4.51%) on HLB-diseased plants with the concentration of 1 × 10 8 conidia.mL −1 after 3 d and 7 d, respectively. It is concluded that there is a need for extensive molecular work to understand the extra-development and mortality of ACP on diseased plants, because, CLas bacterium can be supportive to uptake more sap from plant phloem.

A B S T R A C T The Nipa palm hispid, Octodonta nipae (Maulik) is an important invasive pest of palm trees particularly in Southern China. How this beetle interacts with invading pathogens via its immune system remains to be dissected. Steinernema carpocapsae is a pathogenic nematode that attacks a number of insects of economic importance. The present study systematically investigates the cellular immune responses of O. nipae against S. carpocapsae infection using combined immunological, biochemical and transcriptomics approaches. Our data reveal that S. carpocapsae efficiently resists being encapsulated and melanized within the host's hemolymph and most of the nematodes were observed moving freely in the hemolymph even at 24 h post incubation. Consistently, isolated cuticles from the parasite also withstand encapsulation by the O. nipae hemocytes at all-time points. However, significant encapsulation and melanization of the isolated cuticles were recorded following heat treatment of the cuticles. The host's phenoloxidase activity was found to be slightly suppressed due to S. carpocapsae infection. Furthermore, the expression levels of some antimicrobial peptide (AMP) genes were significantly up-regulated in the S. carpocapsae-challenged O. nipae. Taken together, our data suggest that S. carpocapsae modulates and surpasses the O. nipae immune responses and hence can serve as an excellent biological control agent of the pest.

Studies on the insect pollinators diversity and their relative abundance in Eruca sativa Mill. (Arugula) and Brassica rapa L. (field mustard) was carried out during spring season from February to April consecutively during all the three years of 2016–18. Insect pollinators observed belonged to four orders i.e. Hymenoptera, Diptera, Lepidoptera, and Coleoptera. A total of 20 major species of insect pollinators were recorded. The highest abundance of pollinator species belonged to Hymenoptera. The most prominent insect pollinator species were Apis mellifera followed by other three honey bee species of A. cerana, A. flo-rea, and A. dorsata respectively. Some species of solitary bees were also recorded. From Diptera, four species of syrphid fly and one species from Muscidae family were also recorded. Insect pollinators recorded from order Lepidoptera were Pieris brassicae, Vanessa cardui, and Papilio demoleus. Lady bird beetle Coccinella septempunctata was recorded from Coleoptera order as occasional visitor. It was noticed that E. sativa attracted more insect pollinators than B. rapa which may be attributed to different amount and chemical properties of nectar, with number of pollen grains, and flower canopy of both crops. Further studies are needed to confirm the reasons for higher pollinator visitation to E. sativa than B. rapa through chemical analysis of nectar, amount of pollens, flower physiology and phenology of both crops. Ó 2018 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Adult dragonflies (Anisoptera) were collected from different localities of South China covering eight provinces. Representative sequences were sixty-one, including 16 species, 11 genera and three families (Aeshnidae, Gomphidae and Libellulidae), under cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) gene. After alignment of sequences by BioEdit v6, genetic interaction and divergence were computed by MEGA 7 whereas all the indices of genetic diversity were calculated by DnaSP v5 software. Phylogenetic trees were constructed through Neighbor-Joining method under Jukes-Cantor model, and all species of respective families were assembled with each other into individual groups. Maximum divergence was observed by Trithemis genus (18.69%), followed by Orthetrum genus (18.16%), whereas a minimum value of divergence was noted for Pantala genus (0.31%). On the other hand, maximum genetic diversity was recorded for Orthetrum genus up to 142 mutations, followed by Trithemis genus (126 mutations), while the minimum value (two mutations) was observed for Pantala genus. Genetic diversity for overall and Libellulidae family sequences was much higher, up to 404 mutations and 344 mutations, respectively. Current results suggest a high diversity of odonates in the South China region and results are valuable in gaining a total obligation of the diversity of Asian odonates and conservation measures of this insect group.

The Red Palm Weevil is a serious problem of the date palm in Pakistan. The sole and combine application effects of Beauveria bassiana (Balsamo) Vuillemin (Hyphomycetes) and sub-lethal dosages of Imidacloprid against the second and fourth instar larvae of Rhynchophorus ferrugineus Olivier was investigated in laboratory. Additionally, the in vitro hyphal growth of B. bassiana amended with three different concentrations (50, 250, 500 µl L-1) of Confidor ® 200 SL was also assessed. The results showed significantly higher mortality for the second and fourth instar larvae of RPW when B. bassiana and Imidacloprid applied together compared to their sole application. The highest mortality level (100%) for the second instar was recorded after 15 days of treatment with B. bassiana (1×10 6 conidia/ml) and Imidacloprid (1µl L-1) in combination, while for the fourth instar larvae it was achieved after 20 days of application. However, the presence of Imidacloprid did not significantly affect the hyphal growth of B. bassiana on Sabouraud Dextrose Agar (SDA), and greater colony sizes compared to untreated control were recorded in all cases. The maximum number of sporulation (173, 159.83 conidia ml-1) and percentage (89.15, 79.4%) of mycosed R. ferrugineus cadavers was observed at lower dose rate (1×10 6 conidia/ml) of B. bassiana, exhibited the potential to be exploited for the control of RPW.

The present study was conducted to evaluate the susceptibility of Rhizoglyphus tritici against the comparative potential of ether extracts from Azadirachta indica, Eucalyptus sp., Citrullus colocynthis, Allium sativum, Nicotiana tabacum, Curcuma longa, Nerium indicum, Syzygium aromaticum, Ocimum tenuiflorum and Cassia fistula. The whole trial was executed under laboratory conditions with five concentrations from T1-T5 (0.5%, 1%, 2%, 4% and 8%), and four exposure periods (7, 14, 21 and 28 days). The percentage inhibition of mite population was both time-dependent and concentration-dependent. All the plant extracts exhibited significant acaricidal potential for adult mite as compared to control. The significant population inhibition percentage trend was observed of C. longa 91%, 95.54%, 94.97% and 97.46% and S. aromaticum 88.06%, 92.17%, 95.27% and 96.67% followed by C. fistula 92.03%, 93.27%, 93.22% and 92.07% while least population inhibition percentage was observed of N. tabacum 84.70%, 85..08%, 90.70% and 93.14% after 7, 14, 21 and 28 days. The median lethal concentrations were also calculated for all extracts, and it was observed that S. aromaticum was highly toxic to mites at lowest concentration 0.128, 0.028, 0.006 and 0.005 followed by C. longa 0.071, 0.036, 0.027 and 0.016 while least toxicity was observed in C. colocynthis 0.047, 0.030, 0.009 and 0.009 against R. tritici, and lethal concentration (LC50) decreased with an increasing time of exposure of the R. tritici to the ether extract. It was concluded that acaricidal potential of plants is directly proportional to time exposure and during first and second week C. fistula and S. aromaticum followed C. longa but suddenly after two weeks acaricidal potential of S. aromaticum was boost up and it was concluded that C. fistula, S. aromaticum and C. longa proved to be more effective gainst stored grain mites as compared to the others plant extracts. Perhaps, this new study will provide the basis for further investigation in order to develop new and safer acaricides in field conditions.

The Red Palm Weevil is a serious problem of the date palm in Pakistan. The sole and combine application effects of Beauveria bassiana (Balsamo) Vuillemin (Hyphomycetes) and sub-lethal dosages of Imidacloprid against the second and fourth instar larvae of Rhynchophorus ferrugineus Olivier was investigated in laboratory. Additionally, the in vitro hyphal growth of B. bassiana amended with three different concentrations (50, 250, 500 µl L-1) of Confidor® 200 SL was also assessed. The results showed significantly higher mortality for the second and fourth instar larvae of RPWrnwhen B. bassiana and Imidacloprid applied together compared to their sole application. The highest mortality level (100%) for the second instar was recorded after 15 days of treatment with B. bassiana (1×106 conidia/ml) and Imidacloprid (1 µl L-1) in combination, while for the fourth instar larvae it was achieved after 20 days of application. However, the presence of Imidacloprid did not significantly affect the hyphal growth of B. bassiana on Sabouraud Dextrose Agar (SDA), and greater colony sizes compared to untreated control were recorded in all cases. The maximum number of sporulation (173, 159.83 conidia ml-1) and percentage (89.15, 79.4%) of mycosed R. ferrugineus cadavers was observed at lower dose rate (1×106 conidia/ml) of B. bassiana, exhibited the potential to be exploited for the control of RPW.

Human health and environment are greatly affected by extensive used of synthetic insecticide, which is why the alternative way of pesticides, such as botanical pesticide consumption increase with the passage of time to control of insect pests. The insecticidal impact of Moringa (Moringa oleifera), Neem (Azadirachta indica) and Euclyptus (Eucalyptus globules) leaves extracts were investigated on Diurophous noxia (Hemiptera: Aphididae). This study was aimed to evaluate the efficiency of bio-pesticide instead of synthetic chemicals against D. noxia. Experimental results showed that the percentage of mortality fluctuate with the fluctuation of concentration with time intervals and have great impact on the population of D. noxia. Single, doubled and tripled combinations of leaves extract were tested at two different concentrations (25 and 50%). The results suggested and concluded that from all the application of single botanicals A. indica give better result as compared to other single application while application of double combination M. olerifera with A. indica give significance result instead of other double mixture, meanwhile the triple combination (M. olerifera, A. indica and E. globules) performed excellent result as the others triple mixtures. The study revealed that combine used of M. olerifera, A. indica and E. globules leaves extract were very effective against D. noxia and surge as an alternative way of pesticides instead of synthetic chemicals.

Human health and environment are greatly affected by extensive used of synthetic insecticide, which is why the alternative way of pesticides, such as botanical pesticide consumption increase with the passage of time to control of insect pests. The insecticidal impact of Moringa (Moringa oleifera), Neem (Azadirachta indica) and Euclyptus (Eucalyptus globules) leaves extracts were investigated on Diurophous noxia (Hemiptera: Aphididae). This study was aimed to evaluate the efficiency of bio-pesticide instead of synthetic chemicals against D. noxia. Experimental results showed that the percentage of mortality fluctuate with the fluctuation of concentration with time intervals and have great impact on the population of D. noxia. Single, doubled and tripled combinations of leaves extract were tested at two different concentrations (25 and 50%). The results suggested and concluded that from all the application of single botanicals A. indica give better result as compared to other single application while application of double combination M. olerifera with A. indica give significance result instead of other double mixture, meanwhile the triple combination (M. olerifera, A. indica and E. globules) performed excellent result as the others triple mixtures. The study revealed that combine used of M. olerifera, A. indica and E. globules leaves extract were very effective against D. noxia and surge as an alternative way of pesticides instead of synthetic chemicals.