Abstracto

PROSPECT OF ANTIFEEDANT SECONDARY METABOLITES AS POST HARVEST MATERIAL

Modupe .M. Adeyemi and Musa Mohammed

Pest control agents using plant-based material have been proposed and used as alternatives to synthetic chemicals for integrated pest management. Phytochemicals have been known to have little or no harmful effects on pose humans or the environment as they are safe and mostly biodegradable in nature. The bioactivity of plant-based compounds has been widely reported in numerous literature and is a subject that is gaining more relevance by the day. The antifeedant technique for control of post harvest pest have been studied extensively though mostly at laboratory level and only very few plant-based compounds or formulations have actually been used in agricultural post harvest processes. Plant-based antifeedants secondary metabolites are found among chemical compounds such as phenols, alkaloids, quassinoids, chromenes, saponins, polyacetylenes,, cucurbitacins, cyclopropanoid acids, terpenoids and their derivatives. This paper discusses some of these compounds and their effect against known storage pests.