Abstract
Mosquito-borne diseases remain one of the major health problems in many developing countries in Sub-Saharan Africa as well as other tropical and sub-tropical countries. The resistance of mosquitoes to synthetic chemicals and environmental toxicity created by the chemicals raised the demand for finding of alternate natural molecules that control mosquito. In the present study, a crystalline compound mullein was isolated from the crude extracts prepared from cultures of an ascomyete Pezicula livida. The crude extracts showed larvicidal activity which was tracked by bio-activity guided chromatographic purification to obtain mellein. The larvicidal activity of mellein was evaluated against late 3rd and early 4th instars larvae of Aedes aegypti. The crude extract exhibited 100% larval mortality of Ae. aegypti at 20 ppm. Mellein had LC50 and LC50 values of 1.4 and 4.3 ppm against Ae. aegypti, respectively at 24 h. Mellein is reported here as larvicidal compound for the first time to our best of knowledge.