New insecticidal rocaglamide derivatives from flowers of Aglaia odorata

Abstract

Flowers of A. odorata yielded six insecticidal rocaglamide derivatives including four compounds which proved to be new natural products. Structure elucidation of the new corn pounds, including establishment of their absolute configurations by CD spectroscopy and NMR is described. When incorporated into artificial diet all isolated recaglamide derivatives exhibited strong insecticidal activity towards neonate larvae of the polyphagous pest insect Spodoptera littoralis with LC50s varying from 1.5-53.4 ppm (2.9-97.1 nM). Two of the isolated compounds which showed LC50s of 1.5 and 1.6 ppm (2.9 and 3.2 nM) respectively are similar with regard to their insecticidal activity to azadirachtin (LC50 0.9 ppm [1.3 nm]) which was included into the study as a positive control.