Boll weevil antifeedant bioassay

The results of the boll weevil antifeedant bioassays with anthrani-lic acid, gentisic acid, senecioic acid, cinnamaldehyde and cinnamic acid are presented in Table II. Camphor was not bio-assayed due to its extreme volatility. However camphor is a known moth repellent (8) and is probably a boll weevil antifeedant since the fraction from which it was isolated was active. 

Tliis study describes the isolation and bioassay against insects of six compounds from the Peruvian plant Alchornea trlplinervia. The compounds anthranilic acid, cinnamic acid, and camphor showed significant inhibition of the growth of the tobacco budworm. Anthranilic acid, gentisic acid, senecioic acid, cinnamic acid, and cinnamaldehyde demonstrated low to moderate activity in the boll weevil antifeedant bioassay. Cinnamaldehyde, a constituent of the spice cinnamon, showed the highest level of inhibition to boll weevil feeding. 

Boll weevil antifeedant bioassav. — The bioassay was performed according to the procedure of Hedin et. al. (6, 7). Agar plugs were formed by boiling 3 grams of agar and... 

The plant material was extracted according to the procedure in Figure 1. The ethanol extract [2] (Figure 1) exhibited total inhibition of feeding against the cotton boll weevil at levels of 10, 25, and 50 mg (Table I). Further fractionation of the ethanol extract [2] showed no abatement of this antifeedant activity in either the CHClj [3] or the aqueous fraction [4] with %T/C values of less than 12% at the 10-50 mg dose levels as indicated in Table I. Further fractionation (Figure 1) and bioassay (Table I) showed that the methanol fraction [6], and the CHC /ethanol fraction [7] demonstrated excellent antifeedant activity. 

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