Insects are diverse in their distribution amongst kingdom Animalia. Order Lepidotera (butterflies & moths) stands second after coloeoptera in diversity. Noctuidae is one amongst the important families of order Lepidoptera with 36 families and 4200 genera in it. As moths exhibit great diversity besides the presence of many sub-species and cryptic species it has turned out to be tough conducting the taxonomical studies on them.

The DNA isolation of polyphagous insects by SDS based methods and commercially available kits tend to produce low DNA yields with short storage life from tissues rich in phenolics. We evaluated the efficacy of the traditionally used CTAB-PVPP method for isolation of DNA from the Polyphagous insect Spodoptera frugipedra.