Artemisia herba-alba Asso (A. herba-alba) (Asteraceae) is widely used in herbal medicine as it is a mine of natural molecules such as davanone, which is an interesting product on the international market. The present research proposes a method for controlling the late larval (L4) and pupal stages of Culex pipiens based on the essential oil of A. herba-alba. The aerial part of this plant was extracted by hydrodistillation and then analyzed by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (CPG/SM) to determine its chemical composition. Three concentrations (1, 5 and 10 μl/ml) were prepared and directly tested on larvae (L4) and pupae under laboratory conditions to measure LC50, LC90, LT50, and LT90 values. The yield obtained in this study was 1.5%. Further, the analysis showed that the oil of A. herba-alba is a davanone chemotype that consists mainly of davanone (48.8%). The efficiency of this essential oil for toxicological parameters (LC50 and LC90) were 3.278 μl/ml and 7.573 μl/ml for larvae, and 1.213 μl/ml and 2.288 μl/ml for pupae. This study indicates that the essential oil of A. herba-alba has toxic properties for Cx. pipiens larvae and pupae. These results are encouraging and open up exciting and promising horizons for its application in the production of bioinsecticides.

Aretemisia herba alba Asso (A.herba alba) (Asteraceae) is widely used in herbal medicine it has a real mine of natural molecules like davanone which is a very interesting product on the international market. The present research proposes a method for controlling the pre-imaginary stages of Culex pipiens (L4 and pupae) based on essential oil of Artemisia herba alba. The aerial part of this plant was extracted by hydrodistillation which gave a yield of 1.5. Then it was analyzed by gas chromatography coupled to the mass spectrometry (CPG / SM) for the determination of its chemical composition. The results of the analysis showed that the oil of A.herba alba is a davanone chemotype which consists mainly of davanone (48.8%). Three concentrations (1µl/ml, 5µl/ml and 10µl/ml) are prepared and directly tested on larvae (L4) and pupae. The results show that the essential oils have an important larvicidal and pupicidal activity. This efficiency is expressed by the calculated toxicological parameters which are successively LC50 and LC90, for larvae 3.278 µl/ml and 7.573 µl/ml, and for pupae 1.213 µl/ml and 2.288 µl/ml.