BACKGROUND: Chemical preservatives are now used in various foods to increase shelf life and maintain quality instead of its natural extracts with anti-bacterial properties from plants can be used. Hence this research was planned to evaluate and study the synergistic antibacterial effect of the methanolic extracts of Dracocephalum kotschyi (D. kotschyi) and Trachyspermum ammi (T. ammi) against standard pathogenic bacteria like: Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa), Shigella dysenteriae (S. dysenteriae), Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus).
METHODS: The methanolic extract of D. kotschyi and T. ammi was prepared by the Soxhlet method. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of this methanolic extracts were determined by the microdilution method. Thus, by determining the amount of fractional inhibitory concentration index (FICI), the interaction between the methanolic extracts of D. kotschyi and T. ammi on the pathogenic bacteria was determined.
RESULTS: In this study, the MIC of the extracts of D. kotschyi and T. ammi on the pathogen; S. aureus was equal to 6.25 mg/mL and 12.5 mg/mL for S. dysenteriae, E. coli and P. aeruginosa. Hence, the combination of methanolic extracts of these plants shows a synergistic antibacterial effect (FICI < 0.5), on all tested pathogenic microorganisms was proved.
CONCLUSION: Due to the antimicrobial synergistic effect and cost-effective production process of methanolic extracts of D. kotschyi and T. ammi, they are used as natural preservatives and flavouring agents to preserve foods.
* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.