Antibacterial Potential of Essential Oil Extracted from Eucalyptus Species

The antibacterial activity of essential oil of Eucalyptus species against pathogenic bacteria was evaluated following agar disc diffusion method. This aromatic medicinal plant is the richest bioresources of drugs for traditional system of medicine, modern medicine, folk medicine, nutraceutical, pharmaceutical and chemical entities for synthetic drugs. Aromatic plants are the sources of fragrance, flavours, cosmeceuticals, health beverages and chemical terpens. TLC profiling of pigments and oil of Eucalyptus sp. were done and their Rf values were recorded. Alcoholic extract of 3 sp. of Eucalyptus leaves viz. - E. robusta, E. tereticornis, E. globulus were analyzed for its antibacterial potential against 6 bacterial sp. selected. The highest antibacterial activity was observed against bacteria- Agrobacterium tumifasciens followed by A. rhizogene, Xanthomonas sp. and Salmonella typhii while the minimum activity was observed against Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus. In the present study leaves of three selected Eucalyptus sp. were screened for antibacterial potential against 6 clinically significant bacterial sp. by disc diffusion method.