Ethylcellulose microparticles as green encapsulation for slow release of microspherical abamectin pesticide for agricultural applications: Improvement of process parameters

The use of cellulose in pesticide formulations can be a way to increase the efficiency of pesticides, reduce the dose of active ingredients, and enhance their safety and efficacy. Therefore, ethylcellulose was used as the base polymer. The oil-in-water emulsion solvent evaporation method was also used to construct ethylcellulose microparticles loaded with abamectin pesticides. Response surface methodology was used to optimize and achieve the highest performance of the process operating factors: encapsulation efficiency and loading content of ethylcellulose microparticles. The properties of the abamectin-encapsulated ethylcellulose microparticles, including morphology, thermal stability, degradation, and controlled release behavior, were measured. By optimizing the process parameters, the results showed that the samples had a uniform spherical shape, a flat surface with an average diameter of 4.6 μm, and exhibited good dispersion, controlled release performance, and stable properties. The optimum formulation was obtained with polyvinyl alcohol concentration (0.5 % w/w), core to wall ratio (1:1 (w/w)), oil to water volume ratio (1:2.5 (v/v)), stirring speed (8000 rpm), and emulsion time (1 min). The maximum encapsulation and loading efficiencies were also found to be 99.07 % and 42.12 %, respectively. The results showed that the cellulose microparticles with slow release of abamectin were excellent for enhancing pesticide efficacy.