Modified Molecular Techniques for Detecting Rice Odonate Insects in Thailand

Rice odonates are beneficial predators that can help control insect pests in rice, so playing a valuable role in the rice ecosystem. Morphological classification is not reliable at the taxonomic level for some species. Thus, molecular techniques may be used to resolve species more accurately. Normally, genetic DNA sequence amplification is used in molecular identification. This study modified and developed one stage of the DNA extraction process to permit DNA extraction from a single insect leg. After cytochrome oxidase subunit 1 (COI) amplification, nucleotide banding was conducted to determine the efficiency of the extracted DNA. The results showed that this modification to DNA extraction could yield sufficient DNA to amplify the COI gene, and thus be a practical tool for detecting odonates using molecular techniques.