Abstract: Cotton whitefly, Bemisia tabaci Gennadius is an invasive pest that infests many agricultural/food crops including cotton thereby reducing their productivity, quality and economic value. Due to the emerging pesticide resistance and its secondary side effects to the farmer community, there is a dire need to develop some safer and effective pest management strategies. With this rationale, we evaluated the comparative repellant potential of methanolic and aqueous extracts of three medicinal plants Azadirachta indica, Zingiber officinale and Annona Squamosa against cotton whitefly Bemesia tabaci (Gennadius) (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae); using area preference method on filter papers discs under controlled conditions. The adult flies were exposed to varying concentrations of respective extracts ranging from 5-25% for 2, 4, 6, and 24 hours of duration. The results showed that methanolic extract of Azadirachta indica elicited the highest percent repellency (92.33%±11.42) followed by Zingiber officinale (90.05±10.5) at 25% concentration after 24 hours of treatment while as aqueous extract of Annona Squamosa showed the lowest percent repellency (5.34%±3.12) at 5% concentration after 2 hours of treatment . All of these plants were found significantly effective in repelling whitefly Bemesia tabaci and the repellency effect was found to significantly increase with increase in treatment time.
Taken together the study describes the repellency potential of three medicinal plants against cotton whitefly Bemesia tabaci; however the active constituents need to be isolated and characterized to take the studies further towards translational setups in the field.
Keywords: Cotton plant, Bemisia tabaci, whitefly, repellency, Azadirachta indica, Zingiber officinale, Annona squamosal.
Title: Comparative assessment of repellency effect of Azadirachta indica, Zingiber officinale and Annona squamosa extracts against cotton whitefly- Bemisia tabaci
Author: Sameena Khanday, Rayees Ahmad, Riyes Un Aziz, Gurudutt Sharma
International Journal of Life Sciences Research
ISSN 2348-313X (Print), ISSN 2348-3148 (online)
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