Systematic Surveys of Root-Knot Nematodes from Rice and Soybean Fields of Pakistan

Root-knot nematodes (RKN) are economically important pests of a wide range of crops worldwide and several RKN species are known to cause widespread damage to crops. In Pakistan also these nematode play havoc to agricultural crops and cause significant losses amounting billion of rupees annually. To appraise the coalition of root-knot nematodes, the incidence, distribution and percentage occurrence of RKN in rice and soybean plantations were undertaken by commencing detailed and systematic surveys of these crops from different localities of Pakistan. For this purpose a total of 2100 root and soil samples (1500 samples of rice and 600 samples of soybean) were collected from 41 localities across the country (except Balochistan) were undertaken during 2005-2008. The detailed soil analysis showed that two species of root-knot nematodes Meloidogyne incognita and M. javanica (Treub, 1885) Chitwood, 1949 from rice and three RKN species M. incognita, M. javanica and M. hapla Chitwood, 1949 were more frequently recovered from soybean study areas. The overall occurrence of root-knot nematodes was 33.3 % in rice and 67.1 % in soybean crops from Pakistan during three years. Locality and host wise overall percentage occurrence of RKN during three years study was 29.3 % %) in Punjab and 36 % in Sindh %) from rice plantations; whereas from soybean cultivated areas, the percentage occurrence of root-knot nematodes was 75.4 % from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 66.6 % from Punjab and 59.06 % from Sindh.