Potentiality Assessment of The Activity of Scorpion Venom as An Insecticide Towards Spodoptera frugiperda: Histological and Electron Microscopy Studies

Abd El-Aziz, Fatma El-Zahraa A.; Dawood, Asmaa F.A.; Refaie, Shereen M.; Khan, Shahina

doi:10.21608/eajbsd.2023.325815

Potentiality Assessment of The Activity of Scorpion Venom as An Insecticide Towards Spodoptera frugiperda: Histological and Electron Microscopy Studies

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Zoology and Entomology Departments, Faculty of Science, Assiut University, 71516 Assiut, Egypt.

² Department of Histology, Faculty of Medicine, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt.

³ Department of Biomedical Science, College of Medicine, King Faisal University, Alhasa, Saudi Arabia.

10.21608/eajbsd.2023.325815

Abstract

There are thousands of arthropods around us in all environments, which are considered pests and cause many diseases in humans, animals, and plants. It also contributes to the damage to many agricultural crops around the world. Harmful arthropods are controlled using chemical pesticides, which cause great harm to human health and expose them to many risks. Modern science is now turning to the use of bio-insecticides, which use living organisms and their derivatives for control and are showing promising results. In this work, we used scorpion venom as an insecticide because scorpion venom contains many polypeptides that affect the prey and cause paralysis and death. We studied the outcome of scorpion venom on the larvae that infect corn sweet and cause many losses annually, and the venom as an insecticide showed promising results. Its composition is a rich source of small, highly effective insecticidal proteins that absorb or kill insects. Our results revealed that scorpion venom as an insecticide against Spodoptera frugiperda had a considerable and great effect. After four days of scorpion venom application on S. frugiperda larvae, macroscopical, histological, and scanning electron microscopy examinations revealed a significant reduction in insects until death. Conclusion: scorpion venom showed hopeful insecticidal activity and suitable toxic advantages as associated with other recognized insecticide sets.

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