[Antimicrobial activity and GC-MS analysis of essential oil from lavender extracted by supercritical CO2 extraction...

To investigate the antimicrobial activity in vitro and chemical composition of essential oil from lavender extracted by supercritical CO2 extraction (SFE-CO2) process and hydrodistillation.

The antimicrobial activities against 4 bacteria and 4 fungi strains of these two oils were evaluated by using the agar disc diffusion and agar dilution method to determine the inhibition zone, minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimal bactericidal/fungicidal concentration (MBC/MFC). A GC-MS method was established to determine the chemical components of essential oils.

These two oils presented remarkable antimicrobiat activities against all tested strains in vitro. Compared with the hydrodistillation product, SFE-CO, oil showed better antimicrobial activity against either bacteria or fungi of which MIC values were 0.63-3.33 g x L(-1) and the MBC/MFC values were 1.04-5.00 g x L(-1). By GC-MS analysis, 34 and 29 compounds identified cover 95.51% and 98. 39% of total peak area of substances appeared. The main differences between SFE-CO2 oil and hydrodistillation oil were the amounts of linalyl acetate and 5-methyl-2-(1-methylethenyl)-4-hexen-1-ol acetate.

Results presented here may suggest that the essential oil of lavender extracted by SFE-CO2 possesses has better antimicrobial properties, and therefore it is a potential source of antimicrobial ingredients for pharmaceutical industry.