Twelve essential oils from Mediterranean aromatic plants were tested for their phytotoxic activity, at different doses, against the germination and the initial radicle growth of seeds of Raphanus sativus, Lactuca sativa and Lepidium sativum. The essential oils were obtained from Hyssopus officinalis, Lavandula angustifolia, Majorana hortensis, Melissa officinalis, Ocimum basilicum, Origanum vul...

The present study aimed to investigate the in vitro mutagenic activity of Origanum majorana essential oil. The most abundant compounds identified by GC-MS were γ-terpinene (25.73%), α-terpinene (17.35%), terpinen-4-ol (17.24%), and sabinene (10.8%). Mutagenicity was evaluated by the Salmonella/microsome test using the preincubation procedure on TA98, TA97a, TA100, TA102, and TA1535 Salmonella t...

BACKGROUND In the present study, we investigated the effect of Origanum majorana ethanolic extract on the survival of the highly proliferative and invasive triple-negative p53 mutant breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231. RESULTS We found that O. majorana extract (OME) was able to inhibit the viability of the MDA-MB-231 cells in a time- and concentration-dependent manner. The effect of OME on ce...

Countries like Nepal and India have been using crude plants as medicine since Vedic period. A major part of the total population in developing countries still uses traditional folk medicine obtained from plant resources (Farnsworth 1994). With an estimation of WHO that as many as 80% of worlds population living in rural areas rely on herbal traditional medicines as their primary health care, th...

Essential oils have been proposed as alternatives to antibiotic use in food animal production. This study evaluated 3 chemotypes of the Origanum genus, containing varying amounts of secondary metabolites carvacrol, thymol, and sabinene, in the broiler chicken diet. Aerial parts of Origanum vulgare L. (OL), O. vulgare L. ssp. hirtum (OH), and O. majorana (OM) were collected from a greenhouse loc...

Chrpová D., Kouřimská L., Gordon M.H., Heřmanová V., Roubíčková I., Pánek J. (2010): Antioxidant activity of selected phenols and herbs used in diets for medical conditions. Czech J. Food Sci., 28: 317–325. The antioxidant capacity of some herbs used in dietology practice was determined by the DPPH free radical method, which was calibrated with ascorbic acid. Partially hydrophilic phenolic comp...