author(s)
Suvash Ch Bala, Iftiar Hossain Molla, Pranab Debnath and Sunil Kr Ghosh

abstract
A study was conducted in October, 2018 to explore and identify the predatory mites as well as phytophagous mite fauna from different agro-horticultural crops, weeds and forest plants in Orissa. A total of eleven species of predatory mites belonging to the order Mesostigmata viz., Euseius alstoniae (Gupta, 1975), Euseius ovalis (Evans, 1953), Typhlodromus (Anthoseius) sp., Phytoseius kapuri (Gupta, 1969b), Paraphytoseius orientalis (Narayanan, Kaur & Ghai, 1960), Amblyseius largoensis (Muma, 1955) and Scapulaseius asiaticus (Evans, 1953), Scapulaseius sp. nov. 1 Scapulaseius sp. nov. 2 Neoseiulus paspalivorus (De Leon, 1957), Asperoseious sp., and Phytoscutus sp. nov.1 were recorded which belong to the family Phytoseiidae. Among them, Amblyseius largoensis (Muma, 1955) was found as the predominant species in Orissa. The other important predatory mites belong to the families Tydeidae, Bdellidae, Ascidae and Cunaxides under the order Prostigmata was observed during the period of investigation. The phytophagous mite belong to the family Tetranychidae, (Tetranychus urticae, Koch, Eutetranychus orientalis Klein and Oligonychus sp.), Tarsonemidae, (Polyphagotarsonemus latus, Banks and Steneotarsonemus spinki, Smiley and Brevipalpus phoenicis (Geisk) belonging to the family Tenuipalpidae under the order Prostigmata were identified and found as a key mite pest plants in surveyed areas of Orissa.