DETECTION AND GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF WOLBACHIA ENDOSYMBIONT IN THE NATURAL POPULATIONS OF COTTON LEAFHOPPER, (AMRASCA DEVASTANS) IN PAKISTAN.

Wolbachia a maternally transmitted endosymbiont is found in the reproductive and steroidogenic tissues of arthropods and nematodes. the cotton leafhopper, amrasca devastans (distant) (cicadellidae: homoptera) is sap feeding pests of malvaceous and solanaceous crops and is widely distributed throughout the cotton growing provinces, sindh and punjab.therefore,there is need to work on the identification, diversity and molecular characterization of secondary endosymbiont isolated from cotton leafhopper from pakistan. in the present study, we employed a wolbachia specific 16s rrna pcr assay to investigate the presence of wolbachia in live field specimens of a. devastans collected from 8 different cotton field locations from punjab province pakistan. wolbachia endosymbiont detection percentage was 23.5%. sequence comparisons revealed that the 16s rrna wolbachia sequence from a.devastans had the highest sequence identity to the wolbachia strain of whitefly reported from india and china. this study is first evidence of wolbachia endosymbiont incidence in cotton leafhopper using 16s rrna pcr .by using this technique manipulation of that endosymbionts help to control the the sap feedind pest in future.