Chemical Composition, Insecticidal and Mosquito Larvicidal Activities of Allspice ( Pimenta dioica ) Essential Oil

• Published in: Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 26; no. 21; p. 6698
• Main Authors: Narayanankutty, Arunaksharan, Kuttithodi, Aswathi Moothakoottil, Alfarhan, Ahmed, Rajagopal, Rajakrishnan, Barcelo, Damia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 05.11.2021; MDPI
• Subjects: Animals; Aromatic compounds; biopesticidal activity; Callosobruchus; Callosobruchus maculatus; Cell division; Cereals; Chemical composition; Culicidae - drug effects; Dengue fever; Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; Essential oils; Food; Food industry; Genotoxicity; Inhibitory Concentration 50; Insecticides; Insecticides - chemistry; Insecticides - pharmacology; Insects; Larva - drug effects; Larvae; larvicidal property; Larvicides; Lethal Dose 50; Mosquitoes; Nontarget organisms; Oils & fats; Oils, Volatile - chemistry; Oils, Volatile - pharmacology; Organisms; Pest control; Pesticides; Pests; Phytochemicals - chemistry; Phytochemicals - pharmacology; Phytotoxicity; Pimenta - chemistry; Pimenta dioica; Pimenta dioica essential oil; Plant Leaves - chemistry; Plant Oils - chemistry; Plant Oils - pharmacology; Productivity; Repellency; Sitophilus; Sitophilus oryzae; Spices; Stored products; Toxicity; Vectors; Zika virus; larvicidal property; Pimenta dioica essential oil; biopesticidal activity; Callosobruchus maculatus; Sitophilus oryzae
• ISSN: 1420-3049; 1420-3049
• DOI: 10.3390/molecules26216698

Essential oils are biologically and environmentally safe pesticidal compounds yielded from aromatic plants. Spices are important sources of essential oils, and they are widely used in the medicine, food, and various other industries. Among the different spices, Allspice ( ) is underexplored in terms of its biological efficacy and a limited number of studies are available on the chemical composition of Allspice essential oil (AEO); thus, the present study evaluated the larvicidal property, the repellency, and the fumigant toxicity against common pests of stored products of AEO. AEO was found to inhibit the survival of larvae of such vectors as , and species. Further, AEO was found to exert repellant effects against the pests of such stored products as and . Similarly, the fumigant toxicity was found to be high for AEO against these species. The contact toxicity of AEO was high against and . Apart from that, the essential oil was found to be safe against a non-target organism (guppy fishes) and was found to be non-genotoxic in an model. Overall, the results of the present study indicate that the essential oil from Allspice could be used as an environmentally safe larvicidal and biopesticidal compound.