Efficacy of different ethno-veterinary products against cattle ticks in Nepal

Ticks cause serious economic losses in cattle and an experiment was conducted to test efficacy of different ethno-veterinary products against ticks in Lamjung, Nepal during 2017-2018. The experiment was designed in completely randomized design with seven treatments and four replications. Cattle ticks (Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus) were collected, reared and produced next generation for the test. After 1 hour of treatment application, least number of ticks were found live in Cypermetrhrin application (2.5%) followed by Neem (10%), saltwater (25%), chinaberry and Mug-wort (27.5%). This study clearly shows that different ethno-veterinary products may be the alternative to manage the cattle ticks in the context of developing resistancy to acaricides.

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Comparison of Tick MortalityClose ×

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Replotted from source data

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Average live ticks number after 1 hr of...: Neem vs Chinaberry vs Mug-wort vs Tobacco vs SaltwaterClose ×

Replotted from Table 1 (page 2) of the original paper. Every bar is the paper's own table value.

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Introduction

Ticks cause serious economic losses in livestock industry (Gray, 1985, Sonenshine, 1991; Dhital, 2018) [7,14,24] . It has been studied that about 80% of the world cattle population is infested with ticks (Bowman et al., 1996) [4] . Ticks transmitted viral, bacterial and protozoan pathogens causing diseases like hemorrhagic fever, ehrlichiosis, anaplasmosis, theileriosis, and babesiosis in meat and dairy animals (Rajput et al., 2006) [22] . The efficacy of some acaricides against some ectoparasites became questionable (Hogsette, 1999) [15] . It is reported that ticks developed resistancy to different acaricides in different parts of world (George et al., 2004; Kunz and Kemp, 1994) [10,17] . Tick had the excellent capacity to develop resistance to the acaricides (Solomon, 1983) [23] . It is reported that ticks developed resistance to Amitraz in different parts of Kenya (Kamidi and Kamidi, 2005) [16] . Similarly, resistance is normally seen with more than one class of acaricide in Mexico (Foil et al., 2004) [9] and multiclass resistance is general in Brazil (Graf et al., 2004) [13] . Foil et al. (2004) [9] gave an average of 12 years for evolution of resistance to Amitraz. Different study report showed that ticks causes serious losses on cattle farming in Nepal (Bohara and Shrestha 2016; Dhital. 2018; Dhital et al., 2018) [2, 7, 8] and development of resistancy to different acaricides were also reported in Nepal. Traditionally farmers were using different plant and other products to manage ticks and other ectoparasites in Nepal. However, there is no any scientific study on these products. Hence, it seems necessary to evaluate the efficacy of different ethno-veterinary products against ticks.

Material and Methods

An experiment was conducted to test efficacy of different products against ticks in Lamjung, Nepal during 2017-2018. The experiment was designed in completely randomized designs with seven treatments and four replications namely; Neem (Azadirachta indica) leaf extracts solution, Chinaberry (Melia azedarach) leaf extract solution, Mug-wort (Artemisia vulgaris) leaf extract solution, Salt-water solution, Cypermetrhrin and control (no products application).

Collection of Ticks

Randomly 20 cattle ticks (Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus) were collected from Bageshwori Gaushala, Bharatpur, Chitwan, Nepal in March, 2018. Ticks were collected manually using a forcep and gloves. The collected ticks were stored in a sterile container.

Rearing of ticks

Collected ticks were reared in Entomology lab at Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science, Lamjung Campus. After about 3-4 days ticks were found laid eggs and after one month eggs were hatched out into larvae. Then after fifth days of hatching, ticks were allocated for the testing the efficacy of different botanical product. Ten immature ticks were allocated in each petridis and applications of treatments were done accordingly.

Preparation of different products

Neem (Azadirachta indica) leaf extracts solution, Chinaberry (Melia azedarach) leaf extract solution, Mug-wort (Artemisia vulgaris) leaf extract solution, Salt-water solution, Cypermetrhrin. Leaves of Neem, China berry, Mug-wort, Tobacco were grinded and produced its extract. Similarly, mixture of 100 gram common salt (NaCl) and 200 ml water were used for the another treatments. Tik-out (Cypermethrin 100 EC) was used as chemical pesticides against the ticks.

Statistical Analysis

All the information collected during study including qualitative information were coded and tabulated in Excel sheet. Statistical tools R 4.2.2 were used for the analysis. The recorded data were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA) and significant mean differences were separated by Duncan's Multiple Range Test (DMRT) at 0.05 percent level of significance (Gomez and Gomez, 1984) [12] .

Results

As presented in Table 1 and Figure 1 highest number of dead ticks were found in Cypermethrin treatment followed by Neem whereas least in Chinaberry treatment after 10 min and 1 hour of treatment application. After 1 hour of treatment application, least number of ticks were found live in Cypermetrhrin application (2.5%) followed by Neem (10%), saltwater (25%), chinaberry and Mug-wort (27.5%). All ticks were found live in control treatment.

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Live ticks after different times of treatment application in Lamjung, Nepal, 2017/018

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Original paper figureSource PDF · page 2 ↗

S. N.	Treatment	Average live ticks number after 10 min of treatment application	Average live ticks number after 1 hr of treatment application
1	Neem	8.25cd	0.75d
2	Chinaberry	9.25ab	3.75b
3	Mug-wort	8.75bc	2.75c
4	Tobacco	8.5bc	2.75c
5	Saltwater	8.75bc	2.50c
6	Cypermethrin	7.5d	0.50d
7	Control	10.00a	10.00a
Test of Sign.		***	***
Grand Mean		8.71	3.28
LSD		0.85	0.85
CV		6.62	17.57
EMS		0.33	0.33

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Efficacy of botanical product after 10 mins and 1 hrs of treatment application, 2017/018

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Original paper tableSource PDF · page 2 ↗

Discussions

Different botanical and other products were found effective for the control of tick which is supported by different other reports. Among the tested products Neem was found most effective followed by salt water, Mug-wort (Artemisia vulgaris), tobacco (Nicotina tobaccum) and chinaberry (Mellia azadiract). It is reported by Ghosh et al. (2007) [11] Neem (Azadirachta indica) against different life stages of ticks were highly encouraging. Neem contain Azadirachtin which possesses insecticidal property (Nawrot, and Harmatha, 1994; Vietmeyer, 1992) [18,26] . Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) is used in eradication of external pest of cattle infestation and mange (Davidovic et al., 2011) [6] . It is reported that tobacco leaves (Nicotiana tabacum Linn., Solanaceae) have been used as insecticide and pesticide for long time (Abdul-ghany et al., 2011) [1] . Carlile (2006) [5] remarked that nicotine will rapidly penetrate the cuticle of the target organism, and can be used effectively as a contact insecticide. Mug-wort (Artemisia vulgaris) was using in the treatment of animals infected by blood parasites by rubbing the ground fresh leaves (Davidovic et al., 2011) [6] [3,19,20] . The mechanism behind the insect mortality in the contact toxicity test is that the volatiles penetrate in the insect body via the respiratory system and result in abnormal breathing, which leads to asphyxiation and finally the death of insects (Pare and Tumlinson, 1999) [21] . According to the Tvedten (2016) [25] salt desiccated and killed the ticks. Zewdie (2010) [27] also reported salt water as the effective control measure for the control of ticks.

Conclusion

Ethno-veterinary management practices are also effective as compared to chemical pesticides for the tick control. Therefore, there is a need for further studies on the efficacy of such products which have lower side-effects and reduces the problem of resistance which is prevalent in the use of chemical acaricides.

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