The Effects of Lethal Concentrations of Environmentally Friendly Capsicum frutescens Pesticides on Acheta domesticus

Overview

Objectives/Goals My purpose was to find a type of pepper and a concentration level that would not only be successful, but would also not harm the environment. I am trying to find an environmentally friendly pesticide because there are many factors in a chemical pesticide that can be harmful to both the environment and the organisms that live in it. This is a 3rd year continuation of my previous projects. After performing the experiment, I statistically analyized my data so that I knew whether or not my collected data was valid. Then, I was able to determine which pepper was still lethal but could be produced as a pesticide most cost effectively by using the lowest concentration. I also determined whether there was a difference in the mortality rates between the 3 peppers. Methods/Materials First I liquified the 3 peppers (chile pequi, chile de arbol & chipotle) so I could spray them like a pesticide. I tested the peppers using a total of 50 crickets per concentration level. After spraying the pesticide on the crickets, I observed how many died every 15 minutes until an hour was up. I started out at full concentration for each pepper and reduced the concentrations by half until the pesticide was no longer lethal. Results After looking over my results I got from my 3 peppers at different concentration levels, I found that chile de arbol was very lethal, even at a low concentration. Chile pequin was almost as lethal as chile de arbol, but could only go down to 1/2 the concentration to be as effective as the full amount. The canned chipolte was the weakest out of the 3 peppers. Conclusions/Discussion After conducting my experiment this year, I was able to come up with a sufficient amount of data to be statistically analyzed. The two statistical tests a professor from CSUF helped me run on my data was the Two-Way ANOVA test and the Student-Newman-Keuls (S-N-K) test. The conclusions I drew from the ANOVA test was that my data had too much of a pattern to be caused by chance. After I ran the S-N-K test, I found that by using either chile pequin or chile de arbol at 1/2 concentration would be just as effective and less costly to produce. I am currently running another statistical test to find the rate of kill for each pepper as well as analyzing and comparing the different peppers at the different concentration levels.

Competition history

• CSEF 2007 Pharmacology/ Toxicology · Entry S1505

Resources

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