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Chemical pesticides can cause severe harm to human health and the environment, driving interest in plant-derived alternatives. This research assesses nanoemulsions formulated from four essential oils: basil, cumin, marjoram, and chamomile, targeting the cowpea aphid, a destructive agricultural pest. When tested against both laboratory and field insect strains, the nanoemulsions demonstrated substantially higher toxicity than pure essential oils. For example, basil nanoemulsion achieved fifty percent mortality at forty-five milligrams per litre, compared to nine hundred and ninety-two milligrams per litre for unformulated basil oil. Marjoram nanoemulsion similarly reduced the required lethal concentration. Furthermore, the treatments significantly disrupted the activity of vital insect enzymes, such as acetylcholine esterase, alkaline phosphatase, and glutathione S-transferase. These findings show that essential oil nanoemulsions offer effective insecticidal activity that could support integrated pest management programmes in faba bean cultivation.
Widespread synthetic pesticide use contributes to environmental damage and risks to human health. Demonstrating that common botanical oils can be transformed into potent insecticides through nanoemulsion technology offers a pathway to greener pest control. This approach could help farmers suppress damaging aphid populations on crops such as faba beans while reducing reliance on harmful synthetic chemicals.
The work represents applied laboratory research with preliminary tests on field strains, pointing towards potential biopesticide products for integrated insect management in faba bean production. Agrochemical formulators and agricultural producers seeking sustainable alternatives to synthetic insecticides like dinotefuran represent the primary user base. However, practical commercialisation will require further field-scale efficacy testing, formulation stability evaluation, and regulatory registration before real-world farm adoption is feasible.
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Essential oils are widely used as botanical insecticides rather than chemically synthesized pesticides which led to catastrophic effects on humans, the environment, and eutrophication. Here, encapsulation of four essential oils Basilicum ocimum, Cuminum cyminum, Origanum marjorana, and Matricaria chamomilla were utilized in the presence of 3% v/v ethanol, as anti-insect against Aphis craccivora and compared to traditional insecticides dinotefuran and pymetrozine. Different tools were used to characterize the prepared nanoemulsion such as TEM, SEM, and Zeta potential analyzer. Besides, selected B. ocimum and C. cyminum were analyzed by gas chromatography-mass GC/mass spectrometry. The results reveal that nanoemulsion exhibited considerable toxic activities against laboratory and field strains of cowpea aphid. In the toxicity bioassay test of essential oils, moderate mortality was observed at 10,000 mg/L against aphid with lethal concentration that kills 50% of insects (LC50) values of basil 992 mg/L and marjoram 3162 mg/L. Else, nanoemulsion provided the highest mortality rate at 625 mg/L and the LC50 values of basil nanoemulsion (NE) 45 mg/L, and marjoram NE 188 mg/L in laboratory strains. The systemic effects of the tested substances acetylcholine esterase, alkaline phosphatase, β-esterases, glutathione S-transferase (GST), and mixed-function oxidase (MFO) enzymes on insects were found to be significantly decreased and increased when compared with control groups. Overall, these results highlight that the nanoemulsion is potential tools to control cowpea aphid and could be useful in developing integrated insect management in faba bean fields.
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DOI: 10.3390/pr9040624
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