Actividad antimicrobiana de aceites esenciales de plantas

Abstract

Essential oils are volatile compounds product of the secondary metabolism of plants, these can have antimicrobial activity for both bacteria and fungi due to the varied composition of terpenes, phenols, among other molecules, this allows these compounds to be multipurpose in several branches of the industry such as pharmaceuticals or cosmetics, in this last one they also have antioxidant activity. The activity of the essential oils will be different for each plant and for each organism, to obtain a great variety of results, the individual activity of 47 plants was specifically searched, in which they were tested against different types of bacteria and fungi, once the information was collected it was classified according to their results, these focused on tests of inhibition halo using diffusion disc, in which a certain amount or concentration of essential oil is tested to reveal how strong the antimicrobial activity is. Based on these results that are presented in different research studies, they were classified according to their antimicrobial activity as high, moderate, low and no activity. Essential oils have a very varied activity and the information collected is a sample of the great potential that this type of compound can have, so the main objective has been to collect all the relevant information on the subject that can be found in databases of scientific data to facilitate future work with these types of compounds.