FIRST REPORT OF PRATYLENCHUS PANAMAENSIS IN THE SOUTHERN REGION OF COSTA RICA

Abstract

Coffee (Coffea arabica L.) is one of the most valuable tropical crops in Costa Rica. The plant-parasitic nematodes Meloidogyne exigua and Pratylenchus spp. are a major problem on coffee in the country. A population of Pratylenchus sp. was collected from a coffee plantation in the locality of Daniel Flores, Pérez Zeledón in the southern region of Costa Rica. Morphological and morphometric analyses were performed on 20 females and 20 males. Two nuclear markers, the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and the expansion segment D2-D3 of the 28S gene (28S), and one mitochondrial marker, the partial cox1 gene, were amplified and sequenced. Phylogenetic relationships between the Pratylenchus sp. from Costa Rica and other Pratylenchus spp. were estimated with the Bayesian Inference method. For females, the following measurements (mean + standard deviation) were: body length: 548.25 μm ± 20.79, stylet length: 15.43 μm ± 0.55, and %V: 79.39 ± 0.96. Males had the following measurements: body length: 473.78 μm ± 18.17, stylet length: 14.84 μm ± 0.39, and spicule length: 15.06 μm ± 1.06. Additionally, the Pratylenchus sp. population had lateral fields with four equidistant incisures. The phylogenetic analyses based on the ITS and the 28S placed the Pratylenchus sp. sequences under study in a clade with sequences of P. panamaensis, supported with high posterior probability values (99% and 100%, respectively). This is the first report of P. panamaensis in the southern region of Costa Rica.