Micro-encapsulation of Essential Oils for AntimicrobialFunction and Mosquito Repellency

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The microencapsulated litsea and lemon EO blend emulsion was treated on cotton fab-

rics for testing the mosquito-repellent efficacy against Aedes aegypti mosquito species us-

ing Y-tube Olfactometer (Anuar and Yusof 2016). The cotton fabrics treated with microen-

capsulated EOs achieved 73.43% mosquito repellency, whereas the cotton fabrics treated

EOs alone reached 52.94% repellency (Figure 12.2). This confirmed the importance of en-

capsulation of EOs. The EOs treated fabric has shown to have a potential application not

only for wound dressing or sportswear to control bacterial and fungal contamination, but

also for antimosquito repellency.

12.5

CONCLUSION

Natural plant-based essential oils (EOs) have grown in popularity as they represent an

eco-friendly and biodegradable alternative for use in antimicrobial textile finishing. The

main challenges faced with the application of natural EOs is their durability, shelf-life

and antimicrobial efficiency due to volatility and oxidative degradation. Microencapsula-

tion could be used as a viable technique to preserve the essential biological and functional

characteristics of the volatile components of the essential oils and control their release dur-

ing use. A litsea and lemon EO blend was encapsulated with chitosan and sodium alginate

and applied on the cotton fabrics. The EOs treated fabric has shown to have a potential

application not only for wound dressing or sportswear to control bacterial and fungal con-

tamination but also for antimosquito repellency.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This chapter is partly based on work performed within the framework of IMAAC

(https://imaac.eu/) related to COST Action CA16227 (Investigation & Mathe-

matical Analysis of Avant-garde Disease Control via Mosquito Nano-Tech-Repellents,

https://cost.eu/actions/CA16227/), supported by COST Association (Euro-

pean Cooperation in Science and Technology).