Human food flavor additives as bird repellents: I. Conjugated aromatic compounds

Abstract

Avian repellents derived from natural products and human food flavorants may be less expensive to register under United States environmental pesticide registration requirements. However, one difficulty faced by workers attempting to target repellents for development is the need to screen large numbers of compounds for activity, as well as consideration of formulation and environmental constraints. In this study, we compare the bird repellent activity of aldehyde-based human food additives and compare the levels of activity with our previously elucidated model for structure–activity relationships (SAR) for bird repellents. We find that a previously elucidated SAR model for identifying acetophenone and anthranilate bird repellents is applicable to predicting the activity of aromatic aldehyde flavorants as well. In particular, of the nine flavorants tested, four, benzaldehyde, cinnamaldehyde, o-tolualdehyde, and o-anisaldehyde, warrant further consideration as bird repellents. L© 1999 Society of Chemical Industry