Abstract:

The antimicrobial activity of essential oil and different extracts of Satureja hortensis against some microorganisms were evaluated in the present research work by agar well diffusion method. The strongest antibacterial activity was observed in the essential oil of S. hortensis against the Bacillus subtilis and Staphylococcus aureus. Essential oils showed a wider spectrum of activity but less strong inhibition as compared to the investigated commercial antibiotic. The extracts of S. hortensis (chloroform and hexane) showed the similar rates of activity with ampicillin and amikacin. Also, the essential oil of S. hortensis showed the similar rates of activity with erythromycin and rifampicin. The antioxidant properties of the S. hortensis were evaluated by using different antioxidant assays such as 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl free radical (DPPH.) scavenging, total antioxidant activity, reducing power, ABTS radical scavenging. Total antioxidant activity was measured according to ferric thiocyanate method. BHA, BHT and α-tocopherol were used as the reference antioxidant compounds. At the concentrations of 100 µg/mL essential oil of S. hortensis showed 87.2%, SS 80.4%, SK 77.4%, SH 74.0% and SM 73.6% inhibition on lipid peroxidation of linoleic acid emulsion, respectively. And their activities were greater than that of a-tocopherol (57.9%), BHA (72.3%) and similar to BHT (72.7 %) at this concentration. In addition, S. hortensis had an effective DPPH. scavenging, ABTSradical scavenging and total reducing power activities.

Keywords: