Abstract
Thrips is one of the important sucking pests infesting vegetable crops causing huge economic damage directly by sucking plant sap and indirectly by transmitting orthotospoviruses in the world as well as in India. Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh of India are very important vegetable producing states but lacking sound knowledge on incidence and distribution pattern, virus transmission efficiencies of the economically important thrips species occurring on vegetables. Therefore, intensive sampling of thrips species was done on three important vegetable crops in these two states and were subjected to morphological and molecular diagnostic techniques. Results revealed that nine distinct species of thrips belonging to six genera were known to occur in these states. Interestingly, we report three cryptic species of thrips, Haplothrips ganglbaueri Schmutz and Thrips parvispinus (Karny) in Chhattisgarh, and Haplothrips gowdeyi (Franklin) in Madhya Pradesh for the first time. The other six species recorded were Thrips palmi Karny, Frankliniella schuttzei Trybom, Thrips florum Schmutz, Bathrips melanocornis, Thrips hawaiiensis (Morgan), and Scirtothrips dorsalis Hood. Most dominant species was S. dorsalis, followed by T. palmi. T. parvispinus was recorded for the first time on brinjal host in Chhattisgarh state. The current study reports distribution of nine distinct thrips species including three cryptic species and an invasive species, T. parvispinus in central India.