ABSTRACT

In developing countries, the losses of crops due to pest, plant disease and competition from weeds is great. In households, pest and insects such as mosquitoes, cockroaches, mice etc. pose risks such as the destruction of furniture, clothing and to the causation of various diseases, most seriously;malaria. Pesticides produced to kill these pests in order to prevent these damages, also tend to have adverse effects on humans in various ways, most especially those produced from synthetic materials.

This research targets insecticide produced from natural products and the need to choose these pesticides rather than those of syntheticorigin. The Neem plant which contain many substances with insecticidal properties and the major constituent in it which contains this property is Azadirachta Indica was used for the production of the insecticide.

Production of the Pesticide was done by solvent extraction of the yield from the neem leave and seed, then the formulation was carried out in the desired ratio.Central composite design was usedto study the effect of the process factors (extraction time and mass of solid) on the extract yield. Optimization was carried out using Response Surface Methodology (RSM). A quadratic model was obtained to predict the mass of yield of the neem leave and neem oil as a function of extraction time and mass of solid from RSM.

Maximum extract yield from the neem oil was obtained at 37.114w/w%. An optimum value of 79.56gram of mass solid and 185.93 minutes of the extraction time yielded the response. Maximum extract yield from the neem extract was obtained at 4.66939w/w%. An optimum value of 92.68gram of mass solid and 213.64 minutes of the extraction time yielded the response.