Studies On Persistence And Toxicity Of Two Organophosphorus Insecticides And Plant Extracts To Stored Product Insects

Abstract

The effectiveness of organophosphorus insecticides against stored product insects was studied by various investigators (Abo El-Ghar and Badawy, 1961; Gadavari et al., 1964; Strong et al., 1969; Williams et al., 1978; Barbara and Linda, 1983; Patourel and Tayeb, 1988 and El-Lakwah et al., 1993a).

The use of synthetic pesticides in controlling stored product insects raising a concern among users and environmental protection authorities. One of the possible alternatives to synthetic pesticides is the screening of plants in search for alternative pest control agents such as extracts of plant leaves, flowers, seeds, plant dusts, plant oils etc. In order to overcome and reduce the danger of pollution occurring from the wide use of pesticides in controlling the pests. It is hoped that such agents would be more degradable in nature and with less adverse effect on mammals than of the conventional synthetic insecticides.

The bioactivity of several plant extracts, dusts and plant oils as pest control agents stored product pests was studied by many investigators (Patterson et al., 1975; Schoonhoven, 1978; Singh et al., 1978; Deb-Kirtaniya et al., 1980; Yung and Burkholder, 1981; Gujar and Meherotra, 1983; Ivbijaro, 1984; Yadav, 1984; Jaipal et al., 1984; Su, 1984; Su, 1985; Abo El-Ghar and El-Sheikh, 1987 and El-Lakwah et al., 1989, 1992 a, b, 1993 a, b, c, 1994 and 1995).

Mostafa (1993) studied the effect of mixing wheat grains with powdered leaves of Mentha longifolia and Thymus vulgaris,