BIOLOGICAL ACTIVITIES OF ESSENTIAL OILS

Introduction

Essential oils are liquid merchandise of steam or water distillation of plant components (leaves, stems, bark, seeds, fruits, roots and plant exudates). Expression is employed completely for the extraction of citrus oil from the fruit peel, as a result of chemical components of the oil are simply broken by heat. An essential oil may contain many hundred chemical elements and this advanced mixture of compounds offers the oil its characteristic fragrance and flavour. The plant componnets will be extracted with organic solvents to supply oleoresins, concretes and absolutes or extracted with close to or critical solvent like dioxide to supply terribly prime quality extracts. These oleoresins and extracts contain not solely the volatile oil however additionally the targeted non-volatile flavour elements and these have wide application within the food and pharmaceutical industries. The solvent extraction processes are harder and sophisticated than steam distillation and can ordinarily be on the far side the money resources of most little scale processors, however activity the raw materials to those extraction plants will be a market choice [1-3].

Essential Oils as Antioxidant Agents

Free radicals different reactive element species turn out reaction of proteins, amino acids, unsaturated lipids and Deoxyribonucleic acid. The human body has defense mechanisms against free radicals present in most of the cells. Balance between free radicals and antioxidants can be recovered from an external supply of antioxidants [4-6]. Essential oils are rich in phenolic compounds, and for this reason, attract investigators to gauge their activity as antioxidants or free radical scavengers. The essential oils of basil, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, oregano and thyme have tested radical-scavenging and antioxidant properties in the DPPH radical assay at room temperature [7,8].

Essential Oils as Antibacterial Agents

Essential oils will act as antibacterial agents against a wide spectrum of morbific bacterial strains, including: Listeria monocytogenes, Listeria innocua, Salmonella typhimurium, Escherichia coli O157:H7, Shigella dysenteria, Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus aureus and Salmonella typhimurium etc. Also, Commiphora africana volatile oil can inhibit some pathogenic bacterial strains, such as Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Candida albicans and Helicobacter pylori. The activity of Commiphora africana volatile oil against Helicobacter Pylori, is comparable to the one in every of notable antimicrobial agents, however the latter might favor the emergence of resistant colonies and conjointly gift a possible for the disruption of intestinal microbial flora, that is liable for facet effects [9-25].

Essential Oils as Antifungal Agents

It has been estimated that many of the people in industrialized countries suffer from a food borne illness annually. One such chance is the use of essential oils as food additives that may act as antibacterial and antifungal additives. The antimicrobial activity of essential oils was monitored by the macrodiluition technique. The mycelia growth inhibition, fungi static and fungicidal concentrations were recorded for each strain that showed sensitivity to the essential oils. The essential oils of catnip, cinnamon, tea tree and thyme essential oils exhibited large spectrum antimicrobial activities. Strong in vitro evidence indicates that some essential oils like Thymus schimperi Ronniger essential oil, can act as antibacterial agents against a wide spectrum of pathogenic fungal isolates including Penicillium chrysogenum, Verticillium sp., Aspergillus tubingensis, Aspergillus minutus, Beauveria bassiana and Microsporum gypseum [26-30].

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my colleagues Sateesh Vemuri, Rakesh Mederametla for their everlasting support.

This short commentary is reviewed and approved by Murali M.

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