Mosquito Repellent

Current Research in Microbiology and Biotechnology
Vol. 1, No. 3 (2013): 98-103 Research Article Open Access

ISSN: 2320-2246

Study of Citronella leaf based herbal mosquito repellents using natural binders
Nandini Rani, Aakanksha Wany, Ambarish Saran Vidyarthi and Dev Mani Pandey*
Department of Biotechnology, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Jharkhand- 835215, India

* Corresponding author: Dev Mani Pandey, email: [e-mail]

Received: 15 April 2013

Accepted: 27 April 2013

Online: 04 May 2013

ABSTRACT
Citronella grass has been serving from years as a mosquito repellent in the field of ancient and modern medicine. Commercially available mosquito repellents are chemical based and disastrous to human health. An attempt has been made to prepare a 100% herbal product based on Citronella leaf remains which is left out and of no use after steam distillation. It is cheap, effective and environment friendly. It is a first and preliminary work based on formulating and evaluating herbal mosquito repellent cakes using natural binders such as neem powder, potato starch, corn starch, coconut shell powder, wood powder and cow dung. The efficacy of prepared citronella leaf cakes were evaluated on three different parameters such as flammability, burning time and mosquito repellency test. Also, the cakes were sprayed with different concentrations of Citronella oil. Based on the results obtained from these parameters, the residual percentage of each combination of cakes was calculated and it suggested that Neem powder cake has the most effective repellency activity when impregnated with 10% Citronella oil.

Keywords: Citronella leaf cakes; flammability; mosquito repellent; natural binders; residual percentage INTRODUCTION
Controlling mosquitoes is of utmost importance in the present day scenario with rising number of mosquito borne diseases. An alarming increase in the range of mosquitoes is mainly due to deforestation, industrialized

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