Chapter 1 Mahogany Seed as a Termiticide to Kill Termites INTRODUCTION
Mahogany used in multistorey systems in the Philippines, boat and ship building and pattern making. Logs are used for the manufacture of veneers and for paneling. It is also used as shade for coffee and cacao. Mahogany is regarded as the worlds finest timber for high-class furniture and cabinet work. Its popularity is especially due to its attractive appearance in combination with ease o f working, excellent finishing qualities and dimensional stability. Mahogany is also o ften used for interior trim such as paneling, doors and decorative borders. It is used for boat building, often as a decorative wood for luxury yatch and ocean liners, although it is also used when a medium-weight timber with other good qualities is required. It is sometimes applied make it particularly suitable for precision precision woodwork wo odwork such as models and patterns, instrument cases, c locks, printer's block block and a nd parts of musical instruments; for these purposes, uniform straight-grained material is used. Other minor uses include burial caskets, wood carvings, novelties, toys and turnery. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Mahogany a large trop tropical ical tree with a symmetrical appearance, best-known for its valuable heartwood. The tree is also appreciated as a beautiful and useful street tree. A fast-growing, fast-growing, graceful, straight-trunked, semi-deciduous tree growing to 30-70ft. Most trees, particularly planted street trees grow to 30-40ft. It looses its leaves just as new leafs sprout, so while deciduous, the tree is not without leaves for long. Tiny flowers are followed followed by 4-5", woody fruits fruits that burst open to expel the seeds. Mahogany is a valuable hardwood and this tree was once extensively harvested for its wood. A related tree, S. macrophylla, now provides most commercial mahogany. The tree a lso makes an excellent street tree specimen in warmer climates as is popular pop ular for this purpose. Miami, Florida has numerous mahogany trees planted throughout thro ughout the city for this purpose. The termites are a group of o f eusocial insects usually classified at the taxonomic rank of o rder Isoptera (but see also taxonomy below). Along with ants and some bees and wasps which are all placed in the separate order Hymenoptera, Hymenopt era, termites divide labour among gender lines, produce overlapping generations and take care of young collectively. Termites mostly feed on dead plant material, generally in the form of wood, leaf litter, litter, soil, soil, or animal dung, and about 10% of the estimated 4,000 species (about 2,600 taxonomically known) kno wn) are economically significant as pests that can cause serious structural damage to buildings, crops crop s or plantation forests. Termites Termites are major major detritiv det ritivores, ores, particularly in the subtropical and tropical tro pical regions, regions, and their recycling of wood and other o ther plant matter is of considerable ecological importance. Their role in bioturbation on the Khorat Plateau is under investigation. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
Nowadays, people usually choose choo se new innovations (features) to kill termites or any other pests. Pesticides are usually used to kill a part icular target pest, many will also kill or harm species that the farmer or other user is not targeting. For example, pesticides applied to crops might be washed into streams or lakes and harm fish, beneficial insects, birds, o r even find their way into drinking water
sources. With this regard topic it includes improvement in hu man quality of life and lower food costs. Contributed significantly to improving the quality o f life and safeguarding the environment.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
This proposed study will determine whether extract from the mahogany seed can kill Termites. 1. Can the extract f rom the mahogany seed kill termites? 2. What are the elemental compositions of mahogany seed that can be use as termiticide to k ill termites? 3. How will I know whether the termites are k illed? SCOPE AND DELIMITATION
In constructing or trying the mahogany seeds extract that can be use as termiticide to kill termites there are limitations such as: A. It should be only used and tested in termites. B. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Mahogany
Used as
seed extract
termiticide to kill termites
HYPOTHESIS
OBSERVATORY; On Savanna, Termites Are a Force for Good By SINDYA N. BHANOO Published: June 1, 2010 The African savanna has a cornucopia of majestic creatures -- lions, elephants and giraffes among them. But behind the scenes, it is the t he tiny termite that fuels much of this diversity, a new study reports. Researchers studying termites in Kenya's central highlands h ighlands found that the abundance of flora and fauna is markedly higher atop termite mounds. ''We noticed these circular green patches,'' said Todd Palmer, a co-author of the study and a professor of biology at the University of Florida. ''They had a lot of vegetation and plant material on top of them, and the grass was greener than in other areas.'' The patches were 30 feet in diameter and spaced several hundred feet apart. Dr. Palmer and his colleagues did some digging, and underneath each patch they found millions of termites in subterranean mounds. Quantitatively, Quantitatively, they found that plants grow about 60 percent larger large r on the patches compared with other areas. The nitrogen content of the plants on the mound is about 20 percent higher, and trees on mounds bear 120 percent more fruit. Animal populations also dropped off significantly the farther they were located from a patch. Termite mounds are rich in nutrients like nitrogen n itrogen and phosphorus, and termites also help loosen soil to promote water absorption, Dr. Palmer said. Other animals visit the lush patches to eat and end up defecating and urinating there, adding their own nutrients and triggering more plant p lant growth. In the human world, termites are seen as pests for their remarkable ability to eat into dead wood. But in the animal kingdom, Dr. Palmer said, this is what makes them so desirable. ''They are basically consuming dead wood and plant materials,'' he said. ''In their absence, that would just lie there and there would be no way to break down the organic material and convert it to nitrogen and phosphorus.'' How Termites Live on a Diet of Wood By NICHOLAS WADE Published: November 14, 2008 If only wood could be converted to biof uels, s, there would be no need to t o wait a million years ffor or the trees to be buried and become oil. Wood is indeed convertible to useful chemicals, because termites do it every day, causing $1 billion of damage every year in the United States. But to live on a diet of wood is challenging, not least because wood contains so little nitrogen. So how do te rmites do it? Visual Science Scientists rely on graphics and other visuals to present their findings to the world. This feature takes raw graphics from various scientific journals and unpacks the stories they tell. The trick lies in a cunning triple symbiosis, a team of Japanese scientists report in Fridays issue of Science. In the termites gut lives an amoeba-like microbe called a protist, and inside each protist live some 10,000 members of an obscure bacterium. The microbes in the termites gut are very v ery hard to cultivate outside their termite host and so cannot be studied in the lab. The Japanese scientists, led by Yuichi Hongoh and Moriya Ohkuma at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute in Saitama, have cut through this problem. They extracted the protists bacteria directly from a termites gut, collected enough to analyze their DNA, and an d then decoded the 1,114,206 units of DNA in the bacteriums genome.
By comparing the DNA sequence of the bacteriums genes with other decoded genes already in public databases, the Japanese team was able to figure out what each gene did. It could then reconstruct all the biochemical reactions of which the bacterium is capable, as shown in the figure above. They found that in the bacteriums biochemical repertoire is the ability to convert nitrogen (shown as N2 , to the right of center in the figure) f igure) into ammonium and hydrogen. Unlike nitrogen, which is very unreactive, ammonium is easily incorporated into biochemical reactions. The bacterium can also import urea (shown in the yellow border, at 5 oclock), a waste product produced by its protist host. Since it takes a lot of energy to fix nitrogen, the bacteria probably use urea as their main nitrogen source as long as their host is making enough, and switch to nitrogen as a backup, the Japanese scientists say. The overall process whereby this troika of species makes a meal of wood is shown in the graphic at left: the termite chews the wood into particles that are absorbed by the amoeba. The amoeba breaks d own the cellulose of the wood and gets the nitrogen it needs from its bacteria. The net result is that the two microbes digest wood into sugars and other nutrients of use to the termite. Dr. Caroline Harwood, an expert on microbes and biofuels at the University of W f Washington, n, Seattle, said the new research was a tour de force of genome sequencing that solves the mystery of where the termite gets its nitrogen. Understanding how the termites gut microbes digest cellulose would be of major significance for biofuels, she said, and the Japanese groups whole genome approach could further this goal. Patents; Tracking termites by monitoring their digestive problems and using hot chili peppers to kill them. By Teresa Riordan Published: May 12, 2003 TERRY CLARK, whose family runs a pest-control empire in Lodi, Calif., believes he has a better way to find termites: monitoring the methane they expel. ''Termites eat a lot of roughage, so they have a huge gas problem,'' problem,'' Mr. Clark said. Many different technologies -- from sonar to X-rays -- have been deployed to detect termites, with varying success. What makes termites so insidious is that they can munch their way through the innards of a house undetected. Some winged termites swarm to the surface in the spring s pring (one reason, Mr. Clark noted, that April is National Pest Control Month). But often termites are so stealthy that for a long time the homeowner does not see so much as a wood crumb. Mr. Clark, 40, a vice president of Clark Pest Control, is by no means the first to try methane detection. In 1982, four scientists from three continents collaborated on a paper published in Science magazine that estimated that flatulence from termites might be responsible for as much as 30 3 0 percent of the methane in the earth's atmosphere. Since then, the level of termite-produced methane (and its possible contribution contribution to global warming) has been a matter of fierce scientific contention. The pest-control industry, however, seems to agree that the presence of methane is a legitimate way to track termites. Some specialists use trained beagles to detect it. And some hand-held electronic termite ''sniffers'' are already on the market. But those are supposed to detect methane within the house, Mr. Clark C lark said, while his system syste m is designed to detect and kill termites before they e ven get to the house.
To monitor termite activity, Mr. Clark will w ill ring a house with a couple c ouple of dozen of his devices, which are shaped somewhat like giant plastic tacks and pushed into the ground. The flat disklike top shades the ground, giving ter mites, which are thermally sensitive, the impression that a nice juicy piece of cellulose cel lulose might be sitting on the ground above. At the top is a methane sensor sens or -- which Mr. Clark did not invent and which he buys off the shelf. Inside the spike end of the device is a wood stake with a cardboard collar. ''Cardboard is the junk food of termites,'' Mr. Clark Clar k said. But this is no free meal. If the pest control expert sees, on his monthly rounds, that the methane has collected, the cardboard and wood stake can be infused with a mild poison called Premise, which the termites haul back to stock the colony larder. DEFINITION OF TERMS
1. Innovations ± an altering; a change; to make changes in. to lower or reduce. 2. Extract - the watery circulating circulating juice of a plant; vital fluid; fluid; an excavated trench for approaching a fort. 3. Detritivores - also known as detritus feeders or saprophages, are heterotrophs that [1] obtainnutrients by consuming detritus (decomposing organic matter). By doing so, they contribute to decomposition and the nutrient cycles. 4. Flavonoids (or bioflavonoids)( flavus = yellow) yellow) - also collectively collectively known as Vitamin Vitamin P and citrin, are a class of plant secondary metabolites or yellow pigments having a st ructure similar to that of flavone.
CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 1. Boil 150ml 150ml of water. of water.
2.
ter Boiling, divide ivide the water Af ter
int into
three: 25ml, 5ml, 50ml, 50ml, and 75ml 75ml. Pl Place it in three diff diff eren erent con conta tain iners. ers.
3.
Place 5 grams of smashed of smashed mahog mahoga any seed in each con conta tain iner: er: 5g 5grams: 25ml, 5ml, 5grams: 50ml, 50ml, 5grams: 75ml 75ml.
4.
Wait
for for 5 minu minutes tes unt until mahog mahoga any
seeds extract mi mixed tho thorough oughly with the water.
5. Drain rain..
6.
Spray Test the three. Spray
it int into termi termites
whiich are al wh also separated.
7. Observ serve ho how many many termi termites are kill killed ed in 5grams: 25ml, 5ml, 5grams:50ml, rams:50ml, 5grams:75ml rams:75ml within thin an
exact
rang range e of t of time, me,: af af ter ter 5, 5, 15 an and 30 minu minutes. tes.
8.
For
the secon second d test, test, do the action action num numbers 1 to to 7 ag again but
thi this ti time 10 grams of mah of mahog oga any seed.
9.
For
the thi third test, test, do the action action num numbers 1 to to 7 ag again but
thi this ti time 20 grams of mah of mahog oga any seed.
