A COMPARATIVE REPORT ON THE MITE SPECIES COMPOSITION FROM THE FLOUR MILLS AND GRAIN STORES IN KASHMIR (INDIA)

Abstract

In food storage places, usually mites make their presence either in stored food mass or in food residues. During the present investigation from March 2017 to February 2018, both from the selected 10 Flour Mills and 10 Grain Stores, a total of 240 samples were collected and examined for the presence/absence of mites. The sampling strategy employed was to collect and examine one sample from each Flour Mill and Grain Store in each month. Out of the 120 samples collected from the Flour Mills (12 samples from per Mill), 80 (66.67%) samples were mite-infested with one or more of the 21 mite species reported whereas out of the 120 samples collected from the Grain Store (12 samples from per Store) only 59 (49.17%) samples were mite-infested with one or more of the 16 mite species reported. Thus, a total of 139 (57.92%) mite-infested samples were obtained. The frequency of mite-infested samples including the mite population abundance differed between the Flour mills and Grain stores, between the Flour mills or Grain stores within the same month and within the same Flour mill or Grain store from one month to another month. In general, mite infested samples including mite populations as well as the mite Species Richness were obtained maximally from the Flour mills and during the hotter months. The most predominant species reported in terms of the number of samples found infested with and the number of specimens obtained was Acarus siro followed by Tyrophagus putrescentiae.