Chemical composition, cytotoxic activity and antimicrobial activity of essential oils of leaves and berries of <i>Juniperus phoenicea</i> l. Grown in Egypt

Abstract

Hydrodistillation of berries and leaves of Juniperus phoenicea grown in Sinai yielded volatile oils in the yield of 0.36 and 1.96%, respectively. Using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry technique, fifty eight compounds were identified in berry oil representing 99.2% of the oil composition. alpha-Pinene was the major compound in berry oil (39.30%) followed by sabinene (24.29%). Berry oil composed mainly of monoterpenoids which amounted to 90.53%, of which 72.85% was monoterpene hydrocarbons. The sesquiterpenoids accounted for about 8% of the total oil composition. Leaf oil was composed of about 66 compounds representing 99.16% of the total composition of the oil. alpha-Pinene was the major constituent of leaf oil at concentration of 38.22%, followed by alpha-cedrol (31.23%). The monoterpene hydrocarbon was the predominant chemical group (41.29%) followed by the oxygenated sesquiterpenes (32.21%). Both oils showed very high cytotoxic activities against all cell line tested. They showed equal activities against brain (0.6 microg/ml) and cervix (5.0 microg/ml) human cell lines, while berry oil was slightly more active than leaf oil against lung (0.6 and 0.7 micro/ml, respectively), liver (0.7 and 0.9 microg/ml, respectively) and breast human cell lines (0.8 and 1. microg/ml, respectively).The antimicrobial activity and minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of leaf and berry oils were also determined. The oils showed high activity against most of the tested strains.