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Repellent Activity of Citrus Essential Oils and Two Constituent Compounds Against Aedes aegypti

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Abstract

Mosquitoes have already developed resistance toward most of the commercial synthetic repellents. Therefore, searching for new potential alternatives is the need of the hour. In the study, we evaluated the repellency of six citrus-derived essential oils against Aedes aegypti using the arm-in-cage method. The results showed more than 50 percent repellency up to 4 h exposure time at 1 mg/cm2 area for three Citrus spp. with maximum repellency of 81 percent for C. aurantifolia. Therefore, two of the major constituents of C. aurantifolia EO, namely citral and limonene, were chosen further for the repellency test. The results showed higher efficacy of compounds than crude oil. EC50 for commercial standard repellent DEET was determined for comparison under the same experimental conditions. To understand the possible mode of action of citral, limonene and DEET, in-silico interactions of these compounds with odorant-binding proteins (OBP1 and OBP22) and acetylcholinesterase (AChE) enzymes were studied. The findings revealed positive docking of all of these compounds having affinity values in the range of − 6.0 to − 6.9 kcal/mol. Overall, the study demonstrated that limonene and essential oils of Citrus aurantifolia could be the best potential alternative for synthetic repellents.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Prof. Probodh Borah, Department of Animal Biotechnology, Assam Agricultural University, for his guidance in in-silico studies. Authors are also very thankful to the Head, Department of Botany, Gauhati University, for helping in identifying the plant materials. Authors are thankful to the Head, Dept. of Zoology, Gauhati University, for necessary help and support.

Funding

The authors received no funding for this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, Gauhati University, Guwahati, Assam, India

    Kamal Adhikari, Riju Sarma, Bikash Rabha & Bulbuli Khanikor

Authors
  1. Kamal Adhikari
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  2. Riju Sarma
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  3. Bikash Rabha
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  4. Bulbuli Khanikor
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Contributions

KA wrote the manuscript and did all the experiments. RS did the statistical analysis and aided in the bioinformatics works. BR aided in repellent bioassay, collection of plant materials and extraction of essential oil. BK designed the experiments, supervised the experiments and manuscript. All authors have read and approved the manuscript for submission.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bulbuli Khanikor.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Ethics Approval and Consent to Participate

Use of human volunteers for the study was approved by the Institutional Animal Ethical Committee Gauhati University (Permit No. IAEC/Per/2019/RF/2019–7). We strictly adhered to the protocols suggested by the committee for the repellency tests. Written informed consent was provided by the participant.

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Significance statement

Chemical repellent has posed serious health hazards on the environment and the target insects already developed resistance against the chemical repellent. This manuscript examines and proves the repellent property of Citrus essential oil and the main constituent terpene compounds of Citrus aurantifolia- citral and limonene against Aedes aegypti.

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Adhikari, K., Sarma, R., Rabha, B. et al. Repellent Activity of Citrus Essential Oils and Two Constituent Compounds Against Aedes aegypti. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., India, Sect. B Biol. Sci. 92, 621–628 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40011-022-01347-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40011-022-01347-1

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