Chemical composition and screening of antibacterial activity of essential oil of Pistacia khinjuk against two selected pathogenic bacteria

• DOI: 10.4103/atmph.atmph_630_16
• Publication Date: 2017-12-20T09:21:30Z
• Authors: MohammadMahdi Zan...; Reza Tahvilian; Rohallah Moradi; Hossein Zhaleh; Akram Zangeneh; Hossein Yazdani; Majid Hajialiani
• Keywords: 01 natural sciences; 0104 chemical sciences

Background: Medicinal plants are considered as modern resources for producing agents that could act as alternatives to antibiotics in demeanor of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the chemical composition and antibacterial activity of the essential oil of Pistacia khinjuk (combined with the dominance γ-terpinene) against P. aeruginosa and B. subtilis. Materials and Methods: The chemical composition of the essential oil was identified using gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometer detector (GC-MS). As a screen test to detect antibacterial property of the essential oil, agar disk diffusion and agar well diffusion methods were employed. Macrobroth tube test was performed to determinate minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). Results: According to results of the GC-MS analysis, γ-terpinene (81.14%) (w/w), β-pinene (3.93%) (w/w), and α-terpinolene (2.38%) (w/w) were the abundant components of the essential oil. The MIC and MBC values were 0.015/0.031 g/ml for essential oil of P. khinjuk in case of P. aeruginosa and B. subtilis, respectively. Conclusion: We believe that the article provides support to the antibacterial property of the essential oil. In fact, the results indicate that the essential oil of P. khinjuk can be useful as medicinal or preservative composition. Fractionation and characterization of active molecules will be the future work to investigate.