Abstract:
Whitefly (Family: Aleyrodidae) is one of the major detrimental pests in the world, causing yield
losses and economic injury to many crop species. It is a serious insect pest in the Battticaloa
district of Sri Lanka which attacks numerous fruit crops, vegetables, ornamental, medicinal and
wild crops. High infestation by whitefly ultimately causes death of the host plant.
It is believed that the chemical control against this pest is to be a serious one because of the
development of resistance and destruction of the natural enemies. Several previous studies showed
that there are many natural enemies found in the eco-system to maintain the population of this
pest below the economic threshold level. Therefore biological control of whitefly on fruit crops
becomes important to manage this pest.
In addition, fruits are being consumed freshly and the toxicity adheres with the fruits lead for biomagnification
of insecticide in human. The increasing demand for insecticide free products and
self defense of consumers for toxicity of insecticides force the cultivators to take bio-control
strategy to minimize the whitefly outbreaks by using parasitoids. Parasitoids are species specific
and the effective controlof whiteflies is only attained by the correct identification of whiteflyspecies.
Banana and guava fruit crops were included as the host-plant of whitefly in the study period.
Whitefly infested leaves were collected from which non-parasitized pupae and pupal exuviae
were separated to identify the whiteflies species. Morphological characteristics were recorded to
identify the whitefly species. Spiraling whitefly (Aleurodicus dispersus) species were identified
as the pest of banana and guava
