Search Results (4)

The Asian rice gall midge (Orseolia oryzae (Wood-Mason)) is a major insect pest in rice cultivation. Therefore, development of a reliable system for the timely prediction of this insect would be a valuable tool in pest management. In this study, occurring between the period from 2013–2018: (i) gall midge populations were recorded using a light trap with an incandescent bulb, and (ii) climatological parameters (air temperature, air relative humidity, rainfall and insulations) were measured at four intensive rice cropping agroecosystems that are endemic for gall midge incidence in India. In addition, weekly cumulative trapped gall midge populations and weekly averages of climatological data were subjected to count time series (Integer-valued Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic—INGARCH) and machine learning (Artificial Neural Network—ANN, and Support Vector Regression—SVR) models. The empirical results revealed that the ANN with exogenous variable (ANNX) model outperformed INGRACH with exogenous variable (INGRCHX) and SVR with exogenous variable (SVRX) models in the prediction of gall midge populations in both training and testing data sets. Moreover, the Diebold–Mariano (DM) test confirmed the significant superiority of the ANNX model over INGARCHX and SVRX models in modeling and predicting rice gall midge populations. Utilizing the presented efficient early warning system based on a robust statistical model to predict the build-up of gall midge population could greatly contribute to the design and implementation of both proactive and more sustainable site-specific pest management strategies to avoid significant rice yield losses. Full article

The Asian rice gall midge (Orseolia oryzae) is a major pest responsible for immense loss in rice productivity. Currently, very little knowledge exists with regard to this insect at the molecular level. The present study was initiated with the aim of developing molecular resources as well as identifying alterations at the transcriptome level in the gall midge maggots that are in a compatible (SH) or in an incompatible interaction (RH) with their rice host. Roche 454 pyrosequencing strategy was used to develop both transcriptomics and genomics resources that led to the identification of 79,028 and 85,395 EST sequences from gall midge biotype 4 (GMB4) maggots feeding on a susceptible and resistant rice variety, TN1 (SH) and Suraksha (RH), respectively. Comparative transcriptome analysis of the maggots in SH and RH revealed over-representation of transcripts from proteolysis and protein phosphorylation in maggots from RH. In contrast, over-representation of transcripts for translation, regulation of transcription and transcripts involved in electron transport chain were observed in maggots from SH. This investigation, besides unveiling various mechanisms underlying insect-plant interactions, will also lead to a better understanding of strategies adopted by insects in general, and the Asian rice gall midge in particular, to overcome host defense. Full article

The Asian rice gall midge, Orseolia oryzae (Wood-Mason), is a serious pest of rice. Investigations into the gall midge-rice interaction will unveil the underlying molecular mechanisms which, in turn, can be used as a tool to assist in developing suitable integrated pest management strategies. The insect gut is known to be involved in various physiological and biological processes including digestion, detoxification and interaction with the host. We have cloned and identified two genes, OoprotI and OoprotII, homologous to serine proteases with the conserved His87, Asp136 and Ser241 residues. OoProtI shared 52.26% identity with mosquito-type trypsin from Hessian fly whereas OoProtII showed 52.49% identity to complement component activated C1s from the Hessian fly. Quantitative real time PCR analysis revealed that both the genes were significantly upregulated in larvae feeding on resistant cultivar than in those feeding on susceptible cultivar. These results provide an opportunity to understand the gut physiology of the insect under compatible or incompatible interactions with the host. Phylogenetic analysis grouped these genes in the clade containing proteases of phytophagous insects away from hematophagous insects. Full article

Microsatellite loci were isolated from the genomic DNA of the Asian rice gall midge, Orseolia oryzae (Wood-Mason) using a hybridization capture approach. A total of 90 non-redundant primer pairs, representing unique loci, were designed. These simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers represented di (72%), tri (15.3%), and complex repeats (12.7%). Three biotypes of gall midge (20 individuals for each biotype) were screened using these SSRs. The results revealed that 15 loci were hyper variable and showed polymorphism among different biotypes of this pest. The number of alleles ranged from two to 11 and expected heterozygosity was above 0.5. Inheritance studies with three markers (observed to be polymorphic between sexes) revealed sex linked inheritance of two SSRs (Oosat55 and Oosat59) and autosomal inheritance of one marker (Oosat43). These markers will prove to be a useful tool to devise strategies for integrated pest management and in the study of biotype evolution in this important rice pest. Full article