Mohammad Javad Ardeh - Departments of Agricultural Entomology, Iranian Research Institute of Plant Protection, P. O. Box: ۱۹۳۹۵-۱۴۵۴, Tehran-Iran.

Various molecular techniques are available to make differences and to study the genetic divergences among species and populations, of which the most efficient ones are PCR-based markers. One of these methods, molecular fingerprinting, enables the distinction of closely related populations. ISSR-primers are universal primers that can be used for such studies. The utility of these primers was tested for threepopulations of Eretmocerus mundus Mercet (Hym, Aphelinidae), a primary parasitoid of the whiteflies. Of the ۶۰ ISSR primers, that were checked, as many as ۶۴ bands were obtained from ۱۶ primers. The band sizes ranged from above ۲۰۰ to ۱۰۰۰ bp for different primers. The rate of divergence among the bands was strong enough to make a clear difference among the studied specimens; however the intricacy of using these primers is very much for studying the divergence among several populations. Therefore, sequencing of specific regions of DNA could bring more success to find out divergence among populations of these tiny parasitoids.

Genetic divergences, Biocontrol, molecular techniques, whitefly parasitoid