Persea americana (Mill.) seed extracts: Potential herbal larvicide control measure against Anopheles gambiae Giles, 1902 (Diptera: Culicidae) Malaria vector

Authors: Adesina JM, Jose AR, Rajashekar Y, Ileke KD
The prevalence of mosquito-borne diseases is one of the world’s most important health problems. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent mosquito-borne diseases and improve public health by controlling mosquitoes. Mosquitoes in the larval stage are attractive targets for pesticides because mosquitoes breed in water, which makes it easy to deal with them in this habitat. Nowadays, the control of mosquitoes at larval stage is focused with plant extracts. The present study explored potential larvicidal activity of Persea americana seed using different solvents viz. chloroform, ethyl acetate and acetone for the crude extracts as alternatives to potentially harmful synthetic insecticides. Ten 3rd and 4th instar larvae of Anopheles gambiae, were subjected to different concentration (5μl, 10μl, 15μl, 20μl, 30μl and 40μl) of P. americana seed chloroform, ethyl acetate and acetone crude extracts under WHO laboratory procedure. The percentage mortality of the mosquito species was tested after 24 hrs of exposure to different concentration of the seed extracts. Mortality was dose dependent; ethyl acetate extract recorded higher mortalities after 24 hours at 40μl and similar trend was equally observed in other extracts. LC50 value was lowest for chloroform extract thus suggested to be more toxic than other extracts evaluated.

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