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Contact Toxicity and Repellency of the Essential Oil from Mentha haplocalyx Briq. against Lasioderma serricorne
Identifier
016775
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Lasioderma serricorne, commonly known as the cigarette beetle, cigar beetle, or tobacco beetle, is an insect around 2–3 mm long, and brown in colour. The beetles, which can fly, live 2–6 weeks and do not feed as adults. As indicated by its common name, the cigarette beetle is a pest of tobacco, both in the refined cigarette packet presentation and also as stored in hogsheads and bales, but is also a minor pest of oilcake, oilseeds, cereals, dried fruit, sage, flour, and some animal products.
The female beetle lays around 100 eggs loosely on the commodity. The hatching larvae are the "grow bag" stage of the insect are active and will move around on and bore into the product, feeding as they go. The complete life cycle takes 26 days at 37 °C and 120 days at 20 °C. L. serricorne cannot tolerate the cold; adults die within 6 days at 4 °C, and eggs survive 5 days at 0–5 °C
A description of the experience
Chem Biodivers. 2015 May;12(5):832-9. doi: 10.1002/cbdv.201400245.
Contact Toxicity and Repellency of the Essential Oil from Mentha haplocalyx Briq. against Lasioderma serricorne.
Zhang WJ1, Yang K1, You CX1, Wang CF2,3, Geng ZF4, Su Y5, Wang Y1, Du SS6, Deng ZW4.
The chemical composition of the essential oil obtained by hydrodistillation from the aerial parts of Mentha haplocalyx was investigated by GC-FID and GC/MS analyses. In sum, 23 components, representing 92.88% of the total oil composition, were identified, and the main compounds were found to be menthol (59.71%), menthyl acetate (7.83%), limonene (6.98%), and menthone (4.44%). By bioassay-guided fractionation (contact toxicity), three compounds were obtained from the essential oil and identified as menthol, menthyl acetate, and limonene. The essential oil and the three isolated compounds exhibited potent contact toxicity against Lasioderma serricorne adults, with LD50 values of 16.5, 7.91, 5.96, and 13.7 μg/adult, respectively. Moreover, the oil and its isolated compounds also exhibited strong repellency against L. serricorne adults. At the lower concentrations tested and at 2 h after exposure, menthol showed even significantly stronger repellency than the positive control DEET. The study revealed that the bioactivity properties of the essential oil can be attributed to the synergistic effects of its diverse major and minor components, which indicates that the M. haplocalyx oil and its isolated compounds have potential for the development as natural insecticides and/or repellents to control insects in stored grains and traditional Chinese medicinal materials.
Copyright © 2015 Verlag Helvetica Chimica Acta AG, Zürich.
KEYWORDS: Contact toxicity; Essential oils; Lasioderma serricorne; Mentha haplocalyx; Menthol; Repellency
PMID: 26010670