Acaricidal activity of Tephrosia Vogelii on Rhipicephallus decoloratus ticks collected from Kamira sub county in Luwero district

Abstract

In Uganda, tick management among cattle farmers has become an important problem due to the increasing tick resistance to most of the synthetic acaricides on the market. The increasing acaricide resistance has been accelerated by farmers using wrong dilutions, application methods, and the increased acaricide pressure, hence lowering the productivity of the animal.Furthermore, the increasing ticks and TBDs of cattle due to resistance have resulted into increased demand for alternative control strategies in order to reduce on the livestock losses. This experimental study was intended to evaluate the acaricidal efficacy and phytochemical composition of Tephrosia vogelii methanolic leaf extracts on the ticks collected from Kamira Sub County in Luwero district. The Phytochemical screening of the methanolic leaf extract revealed the presence of various classes of compounds such as Alkaloids, Tannins, Phenols, and Flavanoids with minor presence of Saponins and traces of Terpenoids and Glycosides. When the adult immersion test was carried out the results showed that the average tick mortality increased with increasing concentration of T.vogelii leaf extract and time. There was no significant difference (p>0.05) in tick mortality for all the treatments after 24hrs and 48hrs post treatment. After 72hrs post treatment, a significant difference was observed (p<0.05) in all the concentrations of 2.5%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 40%, and the Amitraz with respective mortalities of 16.5%, 44.0%, 38.5%, 50.0%,67.0%, and 11.0%. Therefore, from the results obtained from this study, we can conclude that indeed Tephrosi avogelii leaf extracts have an acaricidal activity on ticks.