Discovery of a Highly Virulent Strain of Photorhabdus luminescens ssp . akhurstii from Meghalaya, India.

Photorhabdus is an insect-pathogenic Gram negative enterobacterium found in the gut of Heterorhabditis nematodes. Photorhabdus is highly virulent to insects, and can kill insects rapidly upon injection at very low concentrations of one to few cells. We characterized the virulence of Photorhabdus symbionts isolated from the Heterorhabditis nematodes collected from various parts of India by injecting different concentrations of bacterial cells into fourth instar larval stage of insect Galleria mellonella . Photorhabdus luminescens ssp . akhurstii strain IARI-SGMG3 from Meghalaya was identified as the most virulent of all the tested strains on the basis of LT50 and LC50 values. This study forms a basis for further investigations on the genetic basis of virulence in Photorhabdus bacteria.