Phycoconstituents of Some Sargassum Species and Their Evaluation on Insecticidal and Nucleopolyhedroviral (NPV) Replication in vitro and in vivo

Multiple resistance and environmental pollution to chemical pesticides with increasing world population led to the development and the improvement of new trends to pesticides from natural product. The application of natural product as well as the biological control specific agents especially nucleopolyhedro virus (NPV) are considered very important tool to avoid the contradiction between pest control and clean environment. Furthermore, the biological control specific agents have many advantages such as their low mammalian toxicity and no adverse effect on plant growth and seed viability.

The brown algae Sargassum species (Family: Sargassaceae) were widely distributed in worldwide. They have been used as food, as well as in industry and medicine for various purpose.

Pharmacopeial constants, phytochemical screening, determination of minerals and trace elements of Sargassum asperifolium, Sargassum dentifolium and Sargassum linifolium from the Red Sea, Hurghada, Egypt, were investigated.

These studies revealed that Sargassum species have high ash content and gave positive for sublimenable matter, volatile constituents, carbohydrate content, sterols and/or triterpenes. In addition, they have high Ca, K, Mg & Fe contents. The protein content as well as amino acid composition of three algae were performed using Kjeldal method and amino acid analyzer, respectively.

The alcoholic extracts (70%) of Sargassum under investigation were subjected to screen their insecticidal activities in vitro and in vivo on Spodoptera littoralis and Spodoptera fungipende and their effects on the replication of Spodoptera littoralis nucleopolyhedro virus and Spodoptera fungipende nucleopolyhedro virus. The evaluation proved that the tested algae have various insecticidal and antiviral activities.