Essential Oils: Sources of Antimicrobials and Food Preservatives

Abstract

Aromatic and medicinal plants produce essential oils in the form of secondary metabolites. These essential oils can be used in diverse applications in food, perfume, and cosmetic industries. The use of essential oils as antimicrobials and food preservative agents is of concern because of several reported side effects of synthetic oils. Essential oils have the potential to be used as a food preservative for cereals, grains, pulses, fruits, and vegetables. In this review, we briefly describe the results in relevant literature and summarize the uses of essential oils with special emphasis on their antibacterial, bactericidal, antifungal, fungicidal, and food preservative properties. Essential oils have pronounced antimicrobial and food preservative properties because they consist of a variety of active constituents (e.g., terpenes, terpenoids, carotenoids, coumarins, curcumins) that have great significance in the food industry. Thus, the various properties of essential oils offer the possibility of using natural, safe, eco-friendly, cost-effective, renewable, and easily biodegradable antimicrobials for food commodity preservation in the near future.

Actividad antiproliferativa de aceites esenciales de plantas cultivadas en Colombia

“…Los AEs de especies de Piper incluidos en este estudio presentaron actividad antiproliferativa en células MCF-7 y HeLa sugiriendo potencial anticancerígeno. Es conocido que las diversas actividades biológicas de los AEs se explican por la acción de los compuestos que contienen (Pandey et al, 2017). El análisis por cromatografía identificó β-cariofileno, α-copaeno y pineno (α y β) como constituyentes mayoritarios de los AEs de Piper.…”

“…Los aceites esenciales (AEs) son líquidos hidrofóbicos de compuestos aromáticos que están presentes en varias partes de la planta, un sinnúmero de ellos se usan como saborizantes o potenciadores de aromas en cosméticos, perfumes y jabones (Pandey et al, 2017). Resultados de estudios indican que los AEs y componentes aislados poseen actividad in vitro anticancerígena y en ratones de laboratorio pueden reducir el tamaño de tumores inducidos (Bhalla et al, 2013;Lesgards et al, 2014;Sobral et al, 2014;Manion y Widder, 2017).…”

Development of active cassava starch cellulose nanofiber‐based films incorporated with natural antimicrobial tea tree essential oil

“…Some of these components have their concentration limits determined by ISO‐4730, such as terpinen‐4‐ol (lower limit at 35%) . The terpinen‐4‐ol is the main component attributed to the mode of antimicrobial action of TTO, although the mechanisms involved are not yet fully elucidated . The 1,8 cineole component has its maximum concentration limit set at 15%, because this compound can cause skin irritations .…”

Challenges and opportunities related to the use of chitosan as a food preservative

“…; Pandey et al . ), bacteriocins from lactic acid bacteria (LAB), such as nisin or pediocin PAß1‐AcH, and bacteriocin‐producing protective cultures, such as Carnobacterium maltaromaticum UAL307 (Micocin ® ; Liu ; Barbosa et al . ), are used commercially as food preservatives.…”