Development of Plant Based Larvicide and Herbal Mosquito Repellent Fast Card with Reference to Identification of the Functional Bioactive Compounds Effective Against Culex Mosquito

Warm and humid climate creates ideal conditions for mosquito breeding. The ability of these vectors to spread a number of diseases to humans causes millions of deaths every year. Indiscriminate use of synthetic insecticides leads to the development of resistance in vector mosquitoes and along with this, these pesticides cause biological magnification of toxic components and affects adversely the non target organisms including human being. Commercially available, chemically manufactured mosquito repellent fast cards are convenient to use and quite effective but burning of such card generates a lot of smoke and might be hazardous to human health in long run. Thus, alternative approaches are to be adopted to control the population load of vector mosquito. The present study reveals the larvicidal effect of Duranta leaf extract against Culex mosquito. In addition to that mosquito repellent fast card has been developed by Duranta -algal mixture that has shown better result than commercially available fast card on the basis of mosquito mortality as well as the amount of gases emitted. Therefore, the active component of Duranta has also been investigated. In Duranta highest area percentage and peak have been shown by propeonic acid in the retention time 18.086 by GC-MS. So, it can be confirmed that the major active ingredient is propionic acid in Duranta which is responsible for the mosquitocidal properties. Occurrence of propionic acid in Duranta has also been confirmed by the HPLC analysis.