Abstract

The aim of this paper was to evaluate repellency, attraction and mortality of Sitophilus zeamais in grains of maize treated with hydroalcoholic extract of Piper nigrum L. and Annona squamosa L. In order to experiment with repellency and attraction of adult insects an arena composed of five diagonal boxes was formed. Samples of maize treated with powder extract were put in two flasks, in two different flasks the untreated maize and, in the central flask of the arena, 30 insects non-distinguished by gender. Hydroalcoholic extracts were obtained from the dust of the seed of these species, in percolator with the solvent ethyl alcohol (70% v/v). The experiment fit a completely randomized design with treatments disposed in factorial scheme, in which quantitative factors were revealed by regression in variance analysis. Repellency percentage was 86.75% with powder extract of Annona squamosa and 79.25% with Piper nigrum. Mortality of 100% was obtained with extract of A. squamosa at a 5 ml dose and 98% to extract of P. nigrum, at a 14 ml dose, thus indicating the influence of dose and extract on mortality of adult S. zeamais.

Key words: Insecticide effect, mortality, maize weevil, repellency.