ANTIFEEDANT ACTIVITIES OF SOLVENT EXTRACT OF PIPER NIGRUM CORNS AGAINST THE COTTON PEST HELICOVERPA ARMIGERA

Agricultural Toxicology

Growing awareness of environmental hazards from synthetic pesticides has attracted the attention of the researchers. In recent years attention is being diverted towards use of botanicals as key component of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) as alternatives to synthetic pesticides because they are biodegradable and having low mammalian toxicity. In the present study different solvent extracts (Petroleum ether and Methanol) obtained from corns of Piper nigrum were screened for antifeedant activity against the cotton pest Helicoverpa armigera. The two different extracts were tested for antifeedant activity against third instar larvae of H. armigera at four different concentrations (250, 500, 750 and 1000 ppm). The methanolic extracts of corns of P. nigrum exhibited significant activity at 1000 ppm concentration. The methanol extracts showed spots of 72.38 ± 7.4 from the larvae feeding followed by 40.37 ± 4.56 in petroleum ether extracts respectively which are significantly less than the number of spots produced in control (94.24 ± 2.00 and 83.33 ± 2.10 respectively). All the activities are dose dependent. The mean results were statistically significant at 1% level (p<0.01) for three replications.

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