In this investigation, the occurrence of the most damaging species, R. similis and H. oryzicola were not detected in West Bengal. Similar investigations were undertaken in the All India Coordi¬nated Research Project on plant parasitic nematodes from the Hooghly, 24-Pargonas (North) and Nadia districts of West Bengal but the nematode species were not encoun¬tered (Anonymous 2000b).