The Potential of Pandan, Lemon, and Used Coffee and Their Extracts as Ant Repellent

Ng, Wei Pin (2018) The Potential of Pandan, Lemon, and Used Coffee and Their Extracts as Ant Repellent. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

Ants have been a common household problem faced by the society. These problems include, food contamination, destruction of household item, and health. A number of synthetic ant repellent and ant killer products, insect, are available in the market. However, most consumers are wary of using pesticides at home because of concerns over issues such as health risks, residual toxicity, and environmental pollution. The search for an ant repellent of a natural product is needed. Plants have defence mechanism that ensure their survival, with the most prominent function to deter herbivory. The phytochemicals may be the potential natural ant repellent. The objectives of this study is to determine the phytochemicals present in Pandanus amaryllifolius (Pandan), Citrus limon (Lemon), and used coffee, and their repellency properties. Common household ants were baited and captured and the genus was identified as Pheidole spp. Soxhlet’s extraction with ethanol and distilled water, and maceration with ethanol, were used to extract the phytochemicals from the samples. The ants were trapped in a designated container together with the sample and their activity was constantly observed. It was found that Pandan have no repellency effect on the ants. While, used coffee and lemon showed repellency. For the qualitative test, alkaloids were present in Pandan, Lemon, and used coffee. The same goes to saponin, terpenoids, and quinone, except for pandan as quinone were found to be absent. For quantitative test, on the other hand, coffee has the highest flavonoid content (TFC) with a concentration of 34.186μg/ml whereas Pandan has the lowest TFC with a concentration of 11.783μg/ml. As for total phenolic content (TPC) coffee was the highest. It was proposed that terpenoids was the most probable phytochemical responsible for the observed repellency properties in lemon and coffee extract. Further research are needed to determine the potential of these alternative repellents.