Short communicationInhibitory effects of eugenol and thymol on Penicillium citrinum strains in culture media and cheese
Introduction
Penicillium spp. are able to produce toxins such as citrinin in dairy products Jarvis, 1983, Chapman et al., 1983. Citrinin attracted great attention when it was isolated in human fluids from people in Eastern Europe suffering from renal disease with symptoms similar to pork nephropathy Krogh et al., 1974, Betina, 1984. A technique that has been used since ancient times in foods such as cheese to prevent fungal growth, involves physically rubbing the product with certain herbs or spices, or their oils, with well-known antimicrobial properties (Leung, 1978). Over 30,000 different components have been isolated from these plant oils, compounds containing phenol groups being those most used in the food industry (Meeker and Linke, 1988). In this sense, eugenol (the main component of clove oil) and thymol (from thyme oil) are two of the most important representatives and their antibacterial and antifungal properties are well known Buchanan and Shepherd, 1981, Moleyar and Narasimham, 1992, Kim et al., 1995, Paster et al., 1995, Mansour et al., 1996, Outtara et al., 1997.
The aim of the present study was to determine the antifungal effect of eugenol and thymol on the growth and production of citrinin from Penicillium citrinum in culture media and in three types of Spanish cheeses (Arzúa-Ulloa, Cebreiro and San Simón).
Section snippets
Microorganisms
Two strains of P. citrinum NRRL 2274 and P. citrinum NRRL 2269, both from the Colección Española de Cultivos Tipo (Burjasot, Valencia, Spain), and 10 citrinin-producing strains, isolated and also classified as P. citrinum in our laboratory (Vázquez et al., 1995), from Spanish cheeses were used. The strains were maintained on potato dextrose agar (PDA, Oxoid, Hampshire, England) slopes and stored in a refrigerator.
Cheeses
Studies were carried out on three types of Galician cheese (Northwest Spain) with
Inhibitory effects of eugenol and thymol on growth of P. citrinum
Fig. 1a shows the effects of different concentrations of eugenol on P. citrinum (NRRL 2274) growth on YES agar. It is seen that at a concentration of 200 μg/ml fungal growth was delayed for up to 9 days, after which slow growth was observed. This result is consistent with the findings of other authors Martini et al., 1996, Hitokoto et al., 1980, Mansour et al., 1996, Karapinar, 1990. At low concentrations (50 and 100 μg/ml), an initial antifungal activity could be seen but later, when the
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