Essential oils obtained from the native plants Baccharis dracunculifolia and Baccharis uncinella, known also as "óleo de vassoura", are used in the perfumery industry, providing diverse perfumes with exotic aromas. Besides several studies about the biological activities of these species highlight the allelopathic, antioxidant, antimicrobial, cytotoxic and antiinflammatory effects. The broom is a bushy plant which occurs spontaneously in Brazil as well as in the other countries from Mercosul. The oil composition depends on the geographical region and on the concentration of oxygenated blends, highlighting the nerolidol and the sphatulenol. Essential oils obtained from these two species by the hydrodistillation process were assessed by the diffusion method in paper disc, in Petri plaques containing Müeller-Hinton agar, with bacteria suspensions, previously adjusted to the tube 0,5 of Mac Farland scale of four strains which came from the American Type Culture Collection: Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC 27853. Discs containing different volumes of the essential oils (1, 3, 5 and 10 (µL/disc) were added to plaques and incubated at 36 ºC for 24 - 48 hours. Chloranfenicol (CLO) and Amoxicillin (AMO) with concentrations of 30 and 10 µg/disc were respectively used as control. The presented results reveal that both assessed oils present antimicrobial activity against S. aureus, E. coli and P. aeruginosa.
Baccharis; Asteraceae; antimicrobial activity; essential oil
