Indigenous Plants and their Larvicidal Potential against Indian Mosquito Vectors: A Review
Abstract
All over the world, millions of people are suffering from mosquito borne diseases spreading by bacteria, viruses or parasites and transmitted by mosquitoes to humans. It is estimated that about billions of currencies are spent by nations annually due to these diseases and millions of people dye as a consequence of catching mosquito borne diseases. The World Health Organization has recorded mosquitoes borne diseases as one of the topmost threats to public health, particularly in developing countries. In India, it has been estimated that annually more than 40 million people suffer from mosquito illness. Mosquito control includes target killing the larvae of mosquitoes even before they emerge into adults via using botanical extracts as an alternative larvicides. Herbal plants having a good medicinal values and potential so now a days it has been used as an insecticide at an individual and community level. These are non-toxic and biodegradable measures that are easily available and inexpensive depicting broad spectrum potential against the various strains of mosquitoes. Existing studies have taken in account the probit analysis for the calculation of percentage, LC50, LC90 values and 95% confidence limits to propound the observed relationship between the mortality percentage of larvae and logarithmic concentration of the active constituents found in herbal extracts. In this article, we reviewed on the current state of knowledge available on the larvicidal value of plant extracts and mosquitocidal activity, the nature of active parts of plant and promising advances, knowledge to make herbal or biological control of various species of mosquitoes as a potential eco-friendly and safe larvicides.
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