The discovery of novel leads and new mechanisms of action is of vital significance to the development of pesticides. To explore lead compounds for botanical insecticides, 77 β-dihydroagarofuran derivatives were designed and synthesized. Their structures were mainly confirmed by (1)H NMR, (13)C NMR, DEPT-135°, IR, MS, and HRMS. Their insecticidal activity was evaluated against the third-instar larvae of Mythimna separata Walker, and the results indicated that, of these derivatives, eight exhibited more promising insecticidal activity than the positive control, celangulin-V. Particularly, compounds 5.7, 6.6, and 6.7 showed LD50 values of 37.9, 85.1, and 21.1 μg/g, respectively, which were much lower than that of celangulin-V (327.6 μg/g). These results illustrated that β-dihydroagarofuran ketal derivatives can be promising lead compounds for developing novel mechanism-based and highly effective botanical insecticides. Moreover, some newly discovered structure-activity relationships are discussed, which may provide some important guidance for insecticide development.
Keywords: botanical insecticide; insecticidal activity; new mechanism; novel lead; structure−activity relationship; β-dihydroagarofuran.