• Journal of Sericultural and Entomological Science
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.1-20
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• 1983

It has been known that the insect molting hormone and its analogues exist also in plant kingdom and their concentration has been found to be about 0.1~2.0% of dry matter, which is equivalent to $10^3{\sim}10^5$ times of those in insects. This study was carried out; 1) to isolate the phytoecdysones from Korean Achyranthes radix and characterize their physico-chemical properties. 2) to investigate the biological activity of this phytoecdysone on Bombyx mori larvae. The resuls were summarized as follows; 1. The extraction method of phytoecdysones was optimized by three consecutive reflux for 1hr using 200g of dried and milled radix per 1l methanol. 2. The purification from the crude extract was made by a series of steps such as precipitation of gum-type polymer with n-Butyl acetate, adsorption on technical grade silica and chromatography with neutral alumina. The conditions of each step were optimized and the resulting crude crystal was about 500mg per kg dry radix. 3. The crude crystal from the cultivated Achyranthes(Achyranthes japonia) contained ecdysterone (20-hydroxyecdysone) and inokosterone in the proportion of one to one. In order to separate these, a series of processes such as acetylation, separation by alumina column chromatography deacetylation by alcoholysis, deionization and crystallization were introduced and optimized 125mg of ecdysterone and 18mg of inokosterone per kg dry radix were thus obtained. 4. The wild Achyranthes (Achyranthes obtusifolia) radix was found to contain the ecdysterone only. A 285mg of ecdysterone was crystallized per kg dry radix. 5. Isolated ecdysterone, inodosterone and acetylated compounds were characterized by IR., UV., NMR spectroscopy, mp, TLC and densitometry. 6. Ligation experiment was undertaken to confirm the biological activity of the purified ecdysterone; the ecdysterone could induce larval-pupal metamorphosis in the ligated abdomen of 4th instar larvae injecting 0.5~1.0${\mu}g$. 7. By ecdysterone feeding experiment using artificial diet, it was elucidated that the critical time of feeding would be the first half of each instar resulting in increased weight of silk layer. 8. The ecdysterone was fed to 5th instar silkworm at the level of 1, 2, 3, 5ppm of dry feed of artificial diet containing 5% mulberry leaves for 72hrs. At 2ppm of the concentration. body weight and silk layer weight were arrived at maximum. But at higher concentrations body weight and silk layer weight decreased than the control group. At 2ppm of the concentration, body weight was increased by 12.5%. 9. Feeding 2ppm of ecdysterone at the later half of 5th instar, the duration of larvae was shortened.