An assessment of the use of Botanical Extracts and Pheromones for the Off-Host and O-Host control of Amblyoma Variegatum Tick

The livestock tropical bont tick, Amblyomma variegatum Fabricius, is a pest of major economic importance in Africa where it is the vector of Cowdria ruminantium that causes Heartwater, disease in cattle. Its control has relied mainly on commercial acaricides, which have many problems associated with, environmental pollution, development of resistant strains of ticks against acaricides and escalating costs. It has, therefore, become necessary to look for alternative methods of tick control, which are environmentally friendly, relatively cheap and which involve farmers directly. In this regard, the purpose of this study investigated the potential of pheromones in attracting ticks to a trap off-host and toxicating them with Neem products and the repulsion of ticks on-host using repellent plant. The use of pheromone components comprising Attraction-Aggregation-Attachment Pheromone (AAAP), l-octen- 3-ol and 2,6-dichlorophenol to attract A. variegatum to traps containing botanical extracts on the vegetation was explored. The possibility of enhancing attraction of ticks to AAAP with l-octen-3-ol and 2,6- dichlorophenol was first investigated in a T-tube olfactometer in the laboratory. Whereas males were attracted to increasing proportions of l-octen- 3-ol, females were repelled. A combination of 8 ng of l-octen-3-ol with 1.1 mg of AAAP was adopted as an optimum for the attraction of both sexes, enhancing the attraction of ticks by 20% (p