ABSTRACT
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 the long run. Thus, alternative approaches are to be adopted to control the population load of vector mosquito. Like that, the present study also reveals the larvicidal effect of Duranta leaf extract against Culex mosquito. In the present study, mosquito repellent fast card has been developed by Duranta-algal mixture which has shown better result than commercially available fast card on the basis of mosquito mortality as well as the amount of gases emitted. Again, the ethanolic crude extract of Duranta leaves leads to 100% mortality of all instars (Culex pipiens) larvae at both 1000 ppm and 500 ppm concentration. Therefore, the active component of Duranta has also been investigated. In Duranta, highest area percentage and peak have been shown by propionic 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.
