See § Diversity Afenestrata Baldwin & Bell, 1985 Heterodera is a genus of nematodes in the family Heteroderidae.

Members of the genus are obligate parasites and different species attack different crops, often causing great economic damage.

The genus is unique among nematode genera because of the ability of the female to transform into a tough, brown, cyst which protects the eggs which have been formed within her body.

"[2] The following is a list of taxa in the genus Heterodera:[3] GenBank contains internal transcribed spacers sequences for the family, much of which is for this genus.

Subbotin et al., 2003 suggests further analysis of this data will yield a large number of new Heterodera species.