• The City College of New York, CUNY

• BIO 101

 Lab Report #: 2

Investigating the Effectiveness of Lime Essential Oil as Compared to Malaoxon

Introduction: Class Hypothesis and Justification:

With the increasing awareness for using safe insecticidal products among consumers, the

citrus [lime] essential oils, with their attracting terpene compounds having good insecticidal

potency, bear all attributes to be used as commercial green pesticides in coming days both in

indoor and outdoor management of insect pests. (Khanikor et al., 2021). In addition, the peel

essential oil of the plant (lime) is reported to possess a repellent effect against Callosobruchus

maculatus, Aedes aegypti, and Anopheles minimus. (Khanikor and al. 2021). That being said,

citrus essential oils have been found to participate in resistance of citrus fruits against infestation

of Mediterranean fruit fly, Ceratitis capitata, and to possess fumigant and contact insecticidal

properties against a high range of stored product and agricultural pests as well as disease vector

pests. (Karamaouna et al., 2013). The terpene compounds, the peel essential oil, and the fumigant

and contact insecticidal properties in its composition make lime essential oil a great insecticidal

product that can be as effective as malaoxon.

Our class hypothesis is that lime essential oil will inhibit the activity level of

acetylcholinesterase (AChE) as effective as malaoxon. The null hypothesis was that lime

essential oil will not inhibit the activity level of AChE as effective as malaoxon.

Experimental Design:

Lime essential oil and malaoxon are our treatment. The inhibitor is our independent variable

while our dependent variable is the relative inhibition percentage. Our standardized variables

include the type, sex, and age of beetles, the incubation temperature, and the amounts used of the

malaoxon and lime essential oil. The blank tubes without inhibitors represent our control

treatment, and we have 2 levels of treatment, 1 replication, and 10 per sample size per treatment.

Our experimental prediction is that if AChE is exposed to the lime essential oil and to malaoxon,

then lime will inhibit the AChE activity level as does malaoxon due to its attracting terpene

compounds carrying strong insecticidal potency and its contact insecticidal properties against

agricultural pests. In this experiment, after calculating the D.F. and , we used the paired t-test to

find out whether lime essential oil has the same effect as malaoxon on the AChE activity level.