Abstract:We compared the efficiency of the reported primer pair and another version that we redesigned for discriminating tea spiny whitefly, Aleurocanthus camelliae Kanmiya and Kasai, an invasive tea pest in Japan, from another species, A. spiniferus Quaintance , caught on yellow sticky traps in two tea fields in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. The reported primer pair enabled us to identify only 5.0-6.7% of individuals captured, whereas we were able to identify 73.3-75.0% of the captured individuals using the redesigned primer pair. These results suggest that the redesigned primer pair is more effective for monitoring the occurrence of A. camelliae in Japanese tea fields.