Synergistic Antimicrobial Effectiveness of Plant Essential Oil and Its Application in Seafood Preservation: A Review

Abstract

The synergistic potential of plant essential oils (EOs) with other conventional and non-conventional antimicrobial agents is a promising strategy for increasing antimicrobial efficacy and controlling foodborne pathogens. Spoilage microorganisms are one of main concerns of seafood products, while the prevention of seafood spoilage principally requires exclusion or inactivation of microbial activity. This review provides a comprehensive overview of recent studies on the synergistic antimicrobial effect of EOs combined with other available chemicals (such as antibiotics, organic acids, and plant extracts) or physical methods (such as high hydrostatic pressure, irradiation, and vacuum-packaging) utilized to reduce the growth of foodborne pathogens and/or to extend the shelf-life of seafood products. This review highlights the synergistic ability of EOs when used as a seafood preservative, discovering the possible routes of the combined techniques for the development of a novel seafood preservation strategy.

Chitosan Coating Enriched With Ruta graveolens L. Essential Oil Reduces Postharvest Anthracnose of Papaya (Carica papaya L.) and Modulates Defense-Related Gene Expression

“…In the present study, the effects of CS were reinforced by the addition of REO, which has been observed for other EOs ( Sivakumar and Bautista-Baños, 2014 ; Huang et al, 2021 ), through their antimicrobial, antifungal, and antioxidant activities ( Grande Tovar et al, 2019 ; González-Locarno et al, 2020 ; Peralta-Ruiz et al, 2020a ; Zhang D. et al, 2020 ). It has been reported that the mode of action of such EOs is based on the cytotoxic effects including the induction of cell death by activation of apoptosis and/or necrosis processes ( Nazzaro et al, 2017 ; Sharifi-Rad et al, 2017 ).…”

Essential Oils and Their Major Components: An Updated Review on Antimicrobial Activities, Mechanism of Action and Their Potential Application in the Food Industry

“…Many of these publications investigated the application of EO's on food products, including 657 papers on fruits, 403 on vegetables, 415 on fish products, 410 on meat products, 216 on milk and dairy products, and 97 on bread and baked foods [143]. Other recent reviews have discussed the application of rosemary extract in meat [144], the synergistic effect of EO in seafood preservation [145], application of EO in active packaging [146] and as a food preservative [147]. The following section includes the recent history of EO by restricting the citations to the last 5-6 years to provide the readers with an update on EOs and their application in the food matrix (Table 2).…”

Drying Effects on Chemical Composition and Antioxidant Activity of Lippia thymoides Essential Oil, a Natural Source of Thymol

“…Although the chemical composition of the essential oils extracted after drying presented high similarity ( Figure 2 B), only the oils of L. thymoides extracted from dried leaves at 40 °C and 60 °C inhibited the DPPH radical in a statistically similar manner ( Table 3 ). Natural products such as extracts and essential oils are formed by a complex mixture of organic compounds that act synergistically, increasing the biological activity or even antagonistically, thus reducing the verified activity, so identifying the compounds involved with a given biological response represents a methodological challenge [ 57 , 58 , 59 ]. Based on this, we conjecture that this variation in the results of DPPH inhibition percentage for the dried leaves could be involved with the synergist or antagonist effects ( Table 3 ).…”