ON THE COMPOSITION OF TRAIL PHEROMONE OF Anacanthotermes turkestanicus Z. Tilyabaev, Togaev U.R., Sh.Turageldiev, Kh. Khаitbaev Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, 100125 Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Mirzo Ulugbek str., 83 The termites trail pheromones serve as chemical signals that regulate their
communication. This opens the opportunities to use the trail pheromones as attractants
for the pest insects towards the nutrients that contain the toxic compounds, which cause
the massive death of the termites’ colony.
This paper reports on identification of chemicals comprising the trail pheromone of
Anacanthotermes turkestanicus. It has been established experimentally that the methanol extract of the working
termites exhibits the trail activity.
The fractional separation of the extract of working termites using the GC-MS
methods is presented on the figure below.
Figure. GC-MS-assisted fractional separation of the extract of working termites
The GC-MS chromatogram contains two peaks, one of which corresponds to oleic
acid, and another one represents (Е)-2,6,10-trimethylundeca-5,9-diene-1-al. Oleic
acid has been tested for the trail activity using the Y-method.
Based on the results obtained, it has been concluded that oleic acid identified by
GCMS method does not exhibit the trail pheromone properties. It is possible that the
trail pheromone of
Anacanthotermes turkestanicus consists of two components. To
examine this hypothesis there are carried out the synthesis of (Е)-2,6,10-
trimethylundeca-5,9-diene-1-al, which is not a commercial preparation.
This research has been conducted within UZB-Ind-2021-90 Uzbek-Indian
scientific project.