Potentiality of plants as source of insecticide principles

In the search for alternatives to conventional insecticides, essential oils extracted from aromatic plants have been widely investigated. Their toxicities toward insects were of special interest during the last decade. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the data published mostly in the past 10 years on aromatic plant and plant’s essential oils that have been reported to possess insecticidal activity and practical methods and recent techniques for screening these compounds. The review refers to 230 plants, their geographical distribution and the organism tested. Some aspects of recent insecticidal activity directed research on natural products are discussed.