AsianScientist (Dec. 9, 2014) – A study investigating the essential oils of leaves used by indigenous people to wrap food has revealed their rich antioxidant content and the antimicrobial benefits of this natural packaging method. This research has been published in Food Control.
Food deteriorates rapidly in Xishuangbanna, China because of the high humidity and temperature. Indigenous people have accumulated a lot of traditional knowledge on the utilization of local plants to preserve food.
The leaves of Phrynium pubinerve Blume (Marantaceae) and Thysanolaena latifolia (Roxb. ex Hornem.) Honda (Poaceae) have been used as natural food packaging materials and traditional remedies for cough, fever, detoxification and stomach disorders by ethnic minorities in Xishuangbanna. However, there has been no report on their chemical composition or related bioactivities of their essential oils and crude extracts.
To address the information gap, Professor Hu Huabin and his students from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted ethnobotanical studies on P. pubinerve and T. latifolia.
They collected essential oils by simultaneous distillation extraction with a yield of 0.025% (w/w) and 0.030 % (w/w) on a dry weight basis for P. pubinerve and T. latifolia, respectively. By using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis, the researchers identified 46 and 21 components, representing 88.57–93.44 percent of the essential oils of the two species. The essential oil samples were found rich in aliphatic alcohols, aromatics, oxygenated monoterpenes and diterpenes.
All essential oil and ethanol extract samples showed antioxidant activity. Furthermore, they were also active against all tested pathogenic bacteria and spoilage organisms. Moreover, the essential oils had much broader antimicrobial activities than the ethanol extracts and showed notable antimicrobial activity against seven microbial strains.
The results were consistent with the traditional use of both species as naturally biodegradable package materials with antiseptic functions and remedies.
The article can be found at: Li et al. (2014) Essential oils composition and bioactivities of two species leaves used as packaging materials in Xishuangbanna, China.
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Source: Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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