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Antimicrobial Potential of Wild Edible Herbaceous Species

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Mediterranean Wild Edible Plants

Abstract

Natural products, either as pure compounds or as standardized extracts, provide unlimited opportunities to control microbial growth, owing to their chemical composition and diversity. Many herb and spice extracts possess antimicrobial activity against a range of bacteria, yeast, and moulds. Because of their antimicrobial properties, they could be very useful, either as food preservatives or as natural biopesticides. In particular, extracts from wild edible herbaceous species are rich in phenolic compounds. A wide variety of phenolics derived from herbs and spices possesses potent biological activities contributing to their effect against spoilage microorganisms. Many studies have pointed out the antimicrobial properties of certain classes of phenolic compounds, such as hydroxybenzoic, coumaric, and caffeic acid derivatives, flavonoids and coumarins, catechin, epicatechin, proanthocyanidins, and tannins. Moreover, some authors studied the relationship between molecular structure and antimicrobial activity of some phenolic compounds. The antimicrobial activity of polyphenols is principally due to inhibition of some important cellular functions (nucleic acid synthesis, cytoplasmatic membrane functionality, etc.) and to disruption of membrane integrity with consequent leakage of cellular contents.

This chapter reviews the most important phenol-rich wild edible herbaceous species known within the Mediterranean area, highlighting the relationship between phenolic composition and antimicrobial activity of their extracts. Moreover, the problem of standardization and safety of plant extracts is analyzed in the light of the latest literature.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CNR—Institute of Sciences of Food Production (ISPA), Bari, Italy

    Donato Di Venere MSc, Maria Antonia Gatto PhD & Vito V. Bianco MSc

  2. Department of Soil, Plant, and Food Sciences, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Antonio Ippolito PhD

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  1. Donato Di Venere MSc
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  2. Maria Antonia Gatto PhD
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  3. Antonio Ippolito PhD
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  4. Vito V. Bianco MSc
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Correspondence to Donato Di Venere MSc .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Nutrición y Bromatología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    María de Cortes Sánchez-Mata

  2. Dept. de Investigación Agroalimentaria, IMIDRA, Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain

    Javier Tardío

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Di Venere, D., Gatto, M., Ippolito, A., Bianco, V. (2016). Antimicrobial Potential of Wild Edible Herbaceous Species. In: Sánchez-Mata, M., Tardío, J. (eds) Mediterranean Wild Edible Plants. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3329-7_11

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