Chemical Composition and Antimicrobial Activity of the Essential Oil of Pimpinella Puberula (Dc.) Boiss.

In this study, the aerial parts of pimpinella puberula were collected from ramhormozand mashhad (khuzestan and khorasan provinces) at the vegetative, flowering andseeding stages. essential oils from the whole aerial parts as well as stem/leaf,inflorescence, unripe and ripe seeds, were isolated by hydro-distillation. the yields ofessential oil obtained from the ramhormoz samples were 0.49%, 0.31%, 3.81%, 6.01%and 1.80% w/w, and from those from mashhad were 0.96%, 0.87%, 3.59%, 6.94% and4.96% w/w, respectively. the oils from different parts of plant were also analyzed by gcand gc/ms. limonene was the major constituent in all the oils (21.7%-82.4%), followedby pregeijerene (14.6%-55.4%) and geijerene (7.2%- 11.7%). methyl eugenol andelemicine, however were only found in the ramhormoz oil samples. the antimicrobialactivity of the oils was determined using the disk diffusion method against gram positivebacteria (bacillus subtilis, bacillus cereus, micrococcus luteus and staphylococcus aureus),gram negative bacteria (yersinia entrocolitica, klebsiella oxytoca, serratia marcescens,escherichia coli and pseudomonas aeruginosa) and yeast (candida albicans). resultsshowed a significant difference between gram positive and gram negative bacteria intheir susceptibility to the oil, although gram positive bacteria were more susceptible tothe antimicrobial activity of p. puberula oil. in addition, the antimicrobial activity ofsamples collected from ramhormoz were more than of those from mashhad.