Essential oils-oriented chiral esters as potential pesticides: Asymmetric syntheses, characterization and bio-evaluation

In an attempt to find potential pesticides derived from natural products, a novel series of essential oils-oriented chiral esters have been designed and synthesized based on the scaffold of natural pyrethrin. The newly synthesized compounds were screened for their potential insecticidal activity against Plutella xylostella, and the preliminary results revealed that about half of the target compounds' activities have been significantly improved comparing with the essential oil molecules, and some compounds exhibited better insecticidal activity in contrast to the commercialized specie of d-trans-Phenothrin at the concentration of 3.7 mg/L.