The development of different approaches to use agricultural residues as a source of high value-added products, become a must, especially after the problems emerged due to their accumulation. This contribution demonstrates the potential of agricultural residues, Linuim usitatissium (flax seed) and Nigella sativa (black seed) peels, as raw materials for the production of bioactive products, botanical insecticides, against Cx. pipiens, with deep analysis to their chemical constituents by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, the larvicidal efficacies of the three crude extracts (methylene chloride, petroleum ether and methanol 70%) from the two plant waste peels were evaluated for the first time against the late third instar larvae of Cx. pipiens. Results indicated different lethal doses in larvae depending on the efficacy of organic solvent used. For both compounds methanol 70% extracts produced the highest dry yield. The most efficient solvent is petroleum ether in case of both flax and Black seed peels. Petroleum ether extract exhibited the highest toxicity against Cx. pipiens with an LC50 of 69.6383 ppm. The same results for black seed indicated that petroleum ether was the most efficient against Cx. pipiens with an LC50 of 40.7748 ppm. The study revealed for the first time the type of phytochemical constituents presents in peels of flax and black seeds using GC–MS analysis which revealed twenty-eight constituents among extracts of flax and black seed peels ranging from to 58.8711% to 99.99% of the total extracts. GC–MS profiling showed that a five constituents, 9-2-Methyl-Z, Z-3, 13 octadecadienol (terpenoid), 9,17-Octadecadienal, (Z)-, Nonanoic acid, 9-oxo-, methyl ester, 9,12-Octadecadienoic acid Z,Z and Octasiloxane, 1,1,3,3,5,5,7,7,9,9,11,11,13,13,15,15-hexadecamethyl- have insecticidal activity beside many other biological activities as recorded from a variety of botanical extracts. While the constituents like Hexadecanoic acid, methyl ester and cis-9-Hexadecenal, both of them are larvicidal, cis-Vaccenic acid and 9-Oxononanoic acid showing only an insecticidal activity beside Undecanoic acid the mosquito repellent. The other six constituents Linoelaidic acid, Oleic Acid, Z-2-Octadecen-1-ol, 1-Methoxy-3-hydroxymethylheptane, Cis-11,14–Eicosadieonic acid-methyl ester and Heptasiloxane, 1,1,3,3,5,5,7,7,9,9,11,11,13,13-tetradecamethyl- are constituents of other plant extracts which showed as a whole an insecticidal activity.

The current work discusses the production and characterization of new biodegradable nanoparticles for biomedical applications based on insect chitosan. Chitosan has numerous features due to the presence of primary amine groups in repeating units, such as antibacterial and anticancer activities. When polyanion tripolyphosphate is added to chitosan, it creates nanoparticles with higher antibacterial activity than the original chitosan. In this study, the ionic gelation technique was used to make wasp chitosan nanoparticles (WCSNPs) in which TEM and FTIR were used to investigate the physicochemical properties of the nanoparticles. In addition, the antibacterial activities of chitosan nanoparticles against extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)- and carbapenemase-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae, Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa were evaluated. The extracted wasp chitosan exhibited high solubility in acetic acid and met all standard criteria of all characterization testes for nanoparticles; the zeta potential indicated stable WCSNPs capable of binding to cellular membrane and increasing the cellular uptake. The produced WCSNPs showed growth inhibition activity against all tested strains, and the bacterial count was lower than the initial count. The inhibition percent of WCSNPs showed that the lowest concentration of WCSNPs was found to be effective against tested strains. WCSNPs’ antibacterial activity implies that they could be used as novel, highly effective antibacterial agents in a variety of biological applications requiring antibacterial characteristics.

The therapeutic potential of insect-derived bioactive molecules as anti-SARS-CoV-2 agents has shown promising results. Hymenopteran venoms, notably from Apis mellifera (honeybee) and Vespa orientalis (oriental wasp), were examined for the first time in an in vitro setting for their potential anti-COVID-19 activity. This assessment utilized an immunodiagnostic system to detect the SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid antigen titer reduction. Further analyses, including cytotoxicity assays, plaque reduction assays, and in silico docking-based screening, were performed to evaluate the efficacy of the most potent venom. Results indicated that bee and wasp venoms contain bioactive molecules with potential therapeutic effects against SARS-CoV-2.Nevertheless, the wasp venom exhibited superior efficacy compared to bee venom, achieving a 90% maximal (EC₉₀) concentration effect of antigen depletion at 0.184 mg/mL, in contrast to 2.23 mg/mL for bee venom. The cytotoxicity of the wasp venom was assessed on Vero E6 cells 48 h post-treatment using the MTT assay. The CC ₅₀ of the cell growth was 0.16617 mg/mL for Vero E6 cells. The plaque reduction assay of wasp venom revealed 50% inhibition (IC₅₀) at a 0.208 mg/mL concentration. The viral count at 50% inhibition was 2.5 × 10⁴ PFU/mL compared to the initial viral count of 5 × 10⁴ PFU/mL. In silico data for the wasp venom revealed a strong attraction to binding sites on the ACE2 protein, indicating ideal interactions. This substantiates the potential of wasp venom as a promising viral inhibitor against SARS-CoV-2, suggesting its consideration as a prospective natural preventive and curative antiviral drug. In conclusion, hymenopteran venoms, particularly wasp venom, hold promise as a source of potential therapeutic biomolecules against SARS-CoV-2. More research and clinical trials are needed to evaluate these results and investigate their potential for translation into innovative antiviral therapies.

Background: American foulbrood (AFB) is one of the potent and highly contagious bacterial diseases affecting honeybees of Apis mellifera and A. cerana species. Paenibacillus larvae larvae (P. l. larvae) is the causative agent of AFB. The present study evaluated a novel technique to control AFB disease, in vitro, depending on double-coated microencapsulated probiotics. Microencapsulation was performed for the preservation of five different locally isolated, honeybee endogenous lactic acid bacteria (LAB) (Lactobacillus plantarum MK780211, L. plantarum MK780215, L. kunkeei MK780216, L. kunkeei MK780218 and Lactobacillus sp. MK780212). Results: Extrusion technique was used to encapsulate each strain separately in alginate beads coated with resistant starch (Hi-maize) and chitosan. Encapsulation efficiency was determined by testing the cell viability after encapsulation process, and it was ranging between 93.1 and 95.5%. The antimicrobial activity of both free and encapsulated LABs against P. l. larvae was evaluated by the agar well diffusion method. The encapsulation process decreased the activity of all the tested probiotics to some extent, except Lactobacillus sp. MK780212 which caused complete inhibition for P. l. larvae with good shelf-life expectancy time, for a month, compared to its free cells. The effect of whole capsule and its components was evaluated to ensure the activity of the tested probiotics. Conclusion: The laboratory-controlled experiments revealed that the microencapsulation process with double coating can be used with some probiotics efficiently without affecting their activity.

Recently several insects have been identified as potential carriers of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), which have potent activity against pathogens. Wasp venom AMPs serve as defense agents against invading microorganisms.AMPs derived from wasp venom have high attention as therapeutic agents against infectious agents with novel mechanisms of action. In the present study, the antibacterial activity of the oriental hornet “Vespa orientalis L. (Hymenoptera: Vespidae)” venom was determined against three Gram-positive and three Gram-negative bacteria; and the minimum concentration of the venom that inhibits the bacterial growth was determined. Sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) technique was used for fractionation of the V. orientalis venom peptides. The effect of V. orientalis AMPs on bacterial cell membrane and cytoplasm was also investigated; destruction of bacterial cell wall inhibited steps of the synthesis of important molecules and caused cell death. The results proved the highly effective antibacterial properties of the V. orientalis venom. Therefore, peptides of the V. orientalis venom could be potential alternative agents to the currently-used antibiotics.

The role of pesticides in the management of the destructive pest, Spodoptera littoralis, is a dominant tactic used in IPM programs .Chlorpyrifos and Cypermethrin are the most commonly used insecticides in our country. Insect resistance against such insecticides enforced cultivars to increase the recommended doses which increases the pesticide residues in our food. This study's objective was to create a new methodology to measure the residue of Chlorpyrifos and Cypermethrin in potato and tomato yields. Chlorpyrifos showed high tolerance ratio equal to 380-fold in the field strain of S. littoralis with laboratory strain, while Cypermethrin showed a tolerance ratio of 5.79-fold. A proposed modification of QuEChERS method to ensure the effectiveness of using different sorbent nanoparticles in the purification of both Chlorpyrifos and Cypermethrin residues from co-extracts can result in falsely favorable findings in order to guarantee the security of the commercially tomato and potato yields. A new, quick and easy analytical technique was created to determine Chlorpyrifos and Cypermethrin insecticide residues Using GC-MS/MS (gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry). In this method, Octadecyl-modified silica (C18), graphitized carbon black (GCB) and primary secondary amine (PSA) were converted to their corresponding nanoparticles, C18-NPs, GCB-NPs and PSA-NPs for the first time, and used in the sample purification step. Acetonitrile was used to extract the samples and measured using internal standards and matrix-matched calibration. With values of r2>0.99, all pesticides demonstrated good linearity in their respective ranges. With RSDs of 0.2 percent -14.4 percent, the average recoveries of the pesticide-spiked samples varied from 70.0 percent to -112.2 percent. The modified QuEChERS approach proved that PSA-NPs could be recommended for the extraction of both Cypermethrin and Chlorpyrifos from tomatoes. While C18-NPs is recommended for reducing unusual matrix suppression effect of Cypermethrin from potatoes.