I don't know, I assume that this pesticide has been removed from the European market.

Dear Kitherian,

Monocrotophos has been banned in Europe and US too. It was widely used in Hungary about 30 years ago. It was efficient but very toxic. It is soluble in water, acetone and alcohols but its solubility in mineral oil is little. Thus, essential oils cannot be good solvents for monocrotophos.

Dear Bozsik,

Thanks for the response. Still in India farmers have been using this insecticides. 

Hence I am studying about the joint action of this insecticide with some oils.

with kind regards,

k.sahayaraj

Very interesting question on essential oils. While there have been several studies on the insecticidal or pesticidal properties of different essential oils as far as my knowledge and memory goes there has been no such study of the effect of an essential oil in combination with an insecticide. Since essential oils are highly volatile and contain many groups of chemicals you need to look for reaction products if any and loss of the essential oil from the mixture over time. You need to be careful while handling this insecticide.

 Dear Sir,

We recorded high mortality against both sucking and defoliator pests while we treated with oral, and contact toxicity bio-assays. 

Feeding deterrent, enzymology and biochemical studies were also carried out.

Over all manner insecticidal activity was more high.

However, we need to have some clarifications / analysis for Monocrotophos and oil mixture  TEM. Is it possible to help us to know what kind of surface interaction takesplace between in oil and monocrotophos micture.

Yours sincerely,

K.Sahayaraj

The answer is very simple and that is; it will add to the cost of application of the pesticide by the farmers.

Your results are encouraging. Were the tests done under laboratory or filed conditions? Did you also compare the results of the essential oil and the insecticide separately? I did not understand your doubt properly concerning surface interaction. You mean miscibility or surface tension of the mixture? If the problem is physical you can discuss with your physics colleagues. You should be more concerned about chemical reactions if any.

Dear Ghosh a simple preliminary study does not lead to a recommendation to farmers therefore the cost question comes when the product goes into commercial production. More important issue is whether India should allow the use of this insecticide when many other countries have banned its use.

Dear Professor,

We compared the mixture with both oil and insecticide both under laboratory and screen house condition.

We took TEM for insecticide and oil separately and also took TEM for the mixture to check the miscibility 

Any one from your institution will help us to understand better about the interaction.

Thank you so much for the discussion dear professor.

with kind regards

k.sahayaraj

Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT), Hyderabad has worked on technologies for many insecticides including Monocrotophos. You can check the scientists' list and contact the right person. You can also verify CIMAP's (www.cimap.res.in) current list of scientists as most of my colleagues retired. I also retired from service.

Dear Biopesticides Scientists,

We expect your research manuscript from scientist from other than India to publish in Journal of Biopesticides volume 8 and issue 2 scheduled to publish December, 2015. 

SCImago H index is 8, SJR point is 0.26; Google scholar Hindex is 17; Global Impact Factor :0.552. Interested scientists can contact tor send you ms to

The Managing Editor, Dr.K. Sahayaraj (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected])  

It is strange to combine a very toxic insecticide like monocrotophos and an essential oil! We have look at the possible recommendation in future at the conception of an idea.

Dear Dr. Prakasa Rao, 

We try to minimize the monocrotophos load in our agriculture field by the addition of insecticidal essential oil.

With kind regards,

K.Sahayaraj