Drug Discovery of Antimicrobial Activity by Some Essential Oils

Aromatic plants contain odorous, volatile, hydrophobic and highly concentrated compounds called essential oils (or volatile). Leaves, fruits and roots, essential oils are complex agriculture mixtures of secondary metabolites consisting of low-boiling point phenylpropenes and terpenes. There are more than 3000 plants used for their essential oils of which about 300 are used commercially as flavors and fragrances. The food industry uses the oils in soft drinks and the pharmaceutical industry uses them in perfumes, skin and hair care products, etc. Almost every morphological part of the plant is used in traditional medicine for managing various ailments including skin infections, candidiasis, dyspepsia, cough, fever, dysentery and female sterility, stomach-aches, dizziness, amenorrhea, bronchitis, lumbago and neuralgia, pain and skin eruptions. This research was conducted on two Sudanese medicinal and aromatic plants namely: Xylopia aethiopica and Eucalyptus camaldulensis. The antimicrobial activity of essential oils from the both showed variable activities against all Gram positive, Gram negative organisms and the two fungi tested and this is results may justify their folkloric uses.