Essential oil bioassay of three Artemisia species

Essential oils (EO) have been consistently reported as molecules with insecticidal activity and can be used to produce more environmentally friendly larvicides in the control of A. aegypti. In this study, the larvicidal effect of essential oils (EO) from the leaves of three Artemisia species was evaluated against A. aegypti. The oils were obtained from steam distillation and their chemical composition was determined by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The EO of Artemisia camphorata was the most active in the screening bioassay and presented LC50 and LC95 of 64.95 and 74.18 µg mL-1, respectively. In addition, we found that germacrene D-4-ol was the constituent responsible for the toxicity of this EO. A. camphorata EO and its major constituent, germacrene D-4-ol, are promising for the development of natural larvicides against A. aegypti.
Concentration-mortality data were submitted to Probit analysis (PROC PROBIT, SAS 9.2, http://support.sas.com/rnd/app/stat/9.2/stat92resources.html) to estimate the LC50 and LC95 (lethal concentration for 50% and 95% of the larvae, respectively).