Comparison of the effectiveness of some plant extracts as botanical insecticides in soybean farming in Tidal Swampland

ABSTRACT Environmental degradation has reduced the quality of people’s life, especially in developing countries. Therefore, since the 1970s the world community began to pay greater attention to environmental issues, in the context of sustainable development. This can be seen with the Stockholm Conference, Agenda 21 at the Rio Earth Summit, and the Johannesburg Declaration. However, although the commitment and great attention was given at the international level, environmental conditions are still deteriorating. One of the causes is the synthetic pesticides application for controlling pests and plant diseases. The long experience has proven that synthetic pesticides application in plant protection programs has resulted in various disorders such as environmental damage, pest resurgence and resistance, natural enemies’ mortality and human health problems. Therefore, it is very important to get a substitute for synthetic insecticides which is the one of the environmental pollutant sources. The alternatives that need to be developed are utilizing of toxic compounds found in plants known as botanical insecticides. Swampland has great potential of plant species that contain botanic insecticides. This study aims to identify the toxicity of plant extracts of plant-based insecticides for controlling soybean crops pests in tidal swamp land. The laboratory test for the toxicity effects of kirinyu leaf extract (Chromolainaodorata), kepayang (Pangiumedule), bintaro (Carberamanghas) and extract of Java chili fruit (Piper retrofractum) and forest betel (Piper aduncum) in 3rd instar Spodopteralitura larvae, concluded that those plant extracts were able to kill 3rd instar Spodopteralitura larvae with 84%, 93%, 92%, 46% and 92% respectively after 72 hours of observation. Furthermore, the efficacy test of those five plant extracts in soybean cultivation in the tidal swampland of Central Kalimantan showed that Java chili was shown as the lowest leaf damage level (8.0%) followed by kepayang (9.2%). Then, kepayang treatment also has the highest ability in suppressing pods damage both caused by pod borer and pod sucker, with 60.69% and 71.99% respectively. Plots with kirinyu extract treatment has the highest predatory arthropod abundance of 423 (48.85%)