Antimicrobial Activities of Essential Oil of Five Plant Species from Morocco Against Some Microbial Strains

The objective of this study is to assess the in vitro antimicrobial potential and also determine the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of five selected species of medicinal plants from Lamiaceae family, namely Satureja hochreutineri Briq, Teucrium polium, Thymus satureioides, Thymus broussonetti Boiss. and Thymus zygis from wild and in vitro cultivated plants in Morocco with a view of searching a novel essential oil as a preservative in cosmetic products. The tests were carried out using disk-diffusion method, agar well diffusion method. The MICs of the essential oils were determined by broth microdilution method against five standardized microorganisms recommended by the The European Pharmacopoeia, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Candida albicans and Aspergillus brasiliensis. Our results show that essential oils of genus Thymus, Satureja hochreutineri and Teucrium polium exhibited significant in vitro antimicrobial activity against all five tested bacterial and fungal strains except P. aeruginosa which resist to T. polium and S. hochreutineri essential oils with inhibition zone between 7.00–46.33 and MIC values ranged from 0.2 to 20 μl/ml. The results of this study revealed that these essential oils possesses antimicrobial properties as antibiotics, therefore, they can be used as a potential source of active ingredients for cosmetic preservatives.