DESARROLLO DE UNA RUTA SINTÉTICA PARA LA OBTENCIÓN DE LA FEROMONA SEXUAL DEL PIOJO BLANCO DEL LIMÓN (Aspidiotus nerii)

In recent decades, insect sex pheromones are playing an increasingly important role in the detection, monitoring and control of pests, becoming part of Integrated Management strategies and helping to reduce the amount and use of conventional pesticides. The implementation of control techniques based on pheromones makes it necessary to obtain these substances through organic synthesis. Oleander Scale, Aspidiotus nerii Bouché, 1833, is a cosmopolitan and polyphagous pest that attacks more than 100 plant families. In Spain, it is a coccoid pest of medium-importance for citrus crops, after California red scale (Aonidiella aurantii Maskell), Chaff scale (Parlatoria pergandii Comstock) and Purple scale (Lepidosaphes beckii Newman). Conventional chemical control against Oleander scale is sometimes ineffective due to the biology of the pest and the increasing restrictions on the number of available pesticides; thus, a possible treatment of this pest based on its sex pheromone would be highly valuable. The sex pheromone of A. nerii was identified by Einhorn et al. in 1998 as (1R,2S)-cis-2-isopropenyl-1-(4¿-methyl-4¿-penten-1¿-yl)cyclobutaneethanol acetate. Its synthesis has been approached by various authors but the synthetic routes described until now have a high number of synthetic stages and a low overall yield, which makes it not suitable for a multigram scale synthesis. It can be highlighted the synthesis of Einhorn et al., in 1998, involving 17 steps and an overall yield of 0.40% or the total synthesis developed in the same year by Guerrero et al., with 15 steps and an overall yield of 5.6%. For these reasons, this thesis addresses the development of a synthetic route that improves the existing ones to obtain the sex pheromone of A. nerii at a multigram scale. The synthetic route developed in this work is based on low cost commercial substrates such as 3-hydroxypropanenitrile, which can be transformed into the pheromone of interest using only 10 steps and with an overall yield of 10.3%. The proposed route employs simple purification procedures and several reactions including a Blaise reaction and a [2 + 2] photocycloaddition as key reactions. In addition, some of the synthetic intermediates obtained in this proposed route have high interest to improve the synthesis of the aggregation pheromones of Diaprepes abbreviatus Linnaeus and Trypodendron lineatum Olivier, which represent important pests in different countries. The possibility of obtaining a sufficient