Acaricidal activity of Foeniculum vulgare against Rhipicephalus annulatus is mainly dependent on its constituent from trans-anethone

Shawky M Aboelhadid; Waleed M Arafa; Abdel-Azeem S Abdel-Baki; Atalay Sokmen; Saleh Al-Quraishy; Ahmed O Hassan; Asmaa A Kamel

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0260172

Acaricidal activity of Foeniculum vulgare against Rhipicephalus annulatus is mainly dependent on its constituent from trans-anethone

PLoS One. 2021 Dec 2;16(12):e0260172. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260172. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Shawky M Aboelhadid¹, Waleed M Arafa¹, Abdel-Azeem S Abdel-Baki², Atalay Sokmen³, Saleh Al-Quraishy⁴, Ahmed O Hassan⁵, Asmaa A Kamel¹

Affiliations

¹ Parasitology Department, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Beni-Suef University, Beni-Suef, Egypt.
² Zoology Department, Faculty of Science, Beni-Suef University, Beni-Suef, Egypt.
³ Department of Plant Production and Technologies, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Sciences, Konya Food and Agriculture University, Konya, Turkey.
⁴ Zoology Department, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
⁵ Department of Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, United States of America.

Abstract

Globally, the economic losses due to hard ticks infestation and the control of the associated diseases have been calculated at USD $13.9-18.7 billion per year. The economic impact is related to its direct damage to the skins, blood loss, anemia, severe immunological reactions and indirect losses that related to the effects of hemoparasites, cost of treatment for clinical cases and expenses incurred in the control of ticks. The current study evaluated the acaricidal activities of fennel Foeniculum vulgare essential oil and its main components; trans-anethole and fenchone; against R. annulatus. GC-MS analysis revealed that this oil contained 16 components representing 99.9% of the total identified compounds with E-anethole being the predominant component(64.29%), followed by fenchone (9.94%). The fennel oil and trans-anethole showed significant acaricidal activities. The LC50 of the fennel oil was attained at concentrations of 12.96% for adult ticks and 1.75% for tick larvae meanwhile the LC50 of trans-anethole was reached at concentrations of 2.36% for adult tick and 0.56% for tick larvae. On the contrary, fenchone showed no any significant adulticidal activities and its LC50 attained at a concentration of 9.11% for tick larvae. Regarding repellence activities, trans-anethole achieved 100% repellency at the concentration of 10% while fennel showed 86% repellency at the same concentration. Fenchone showed no repellency effect. Treatment of larvae with fennel, trans-anethole, and fenchone LC50 concentrations significantly inhibited the acetylcholinesterase activity. Meanwhile, glutathione s-transferase activity was significantly decreased in fennel treated larvae but no significant effect was found in the larvae of trans-anethole and fenchone groups. These results indicate that the acaricide effect of fennel oil may attributed to its high content of trans-anethole. This was supported by potent adulticidal, larvicidal, and repellency effects of trans-anethole against Rhipeciphalus annulatus tick and therefore it could be included in the list of acaricide of plant origin.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Acetylcholinesterase
Animals
Foeniculum*
Fruit
Oils, Volatile
Rhipicephalus*

Substances

Oils, Volatile
Acetylcholinesterase

Grants and funding

Researcher supporting Project (RSP-2021/3), King Saud University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.