Abstract

The cost and effect of inorganic chemical pesticides on the environment and living organism as well as growing resistance of inorganic chemical pesticides is a threat to their future application as pesticide on crops. This research focuses on optimization of bio-pesticide production from neem seed oil using response surface methodology. The neem seed oil was characterized to test it suitability for production of bio-pesticide and the use of response surface methodology involving central composite design to optimize the pesticide formulation parameters. The characterized oil was found with a specific gravity, saponification value, iodine value, pH value of 0.912, 180.55mg/g, 86.42 g/g and 5.36 respectively. The optimum response was found to be 64.53% weight reduction of pest after 3 days under the optimized conditions of 17.96ml of neem seed oil, 4.51ml of emulsifier and 5.42ml of water, the developed model was significant and is confirmed by the P-value of less than 0.0001 and the higher F value of 21.0196. Design Expert 7.0 software was used for the optimization of bio-pesticide production from neem seed oil, emulsifier and water as variables using response surface methodology.