Abstract
These past years have seen an enormous development of the area of natural antioxidants and antimicrobials. Eucalyptus globulus is widely cultivated in subtropical and Mediterranean regions in intensive short rotation coppice plantations. In the Portuguese context, E. globulus is the third species in terms of forest area. The stump is the basal part of the tree, including the near-the-ground stem portion and the woody roots that remain after stem felling. The purpose of this work was to study the phytochemical profile and to evaluate the antioxidant and antimicrobial properties of several crude stump wood and stump bark extracts of E. globulus, comparing it with similar extracts of E. globulus wood (industrial chips). The results showed the presence of high concentrations of total phenolic compounds (>200 mg GAE/g extract) and flavonoids (>10 mg QE/g extract) in E. globulus stump extracts. Generally the stump wood extracts stands out from the other ones, presenting the highest percentages of inhibition of linoleic acid oxidation. It was also possible to conclude that the extracts were more active against Gram-positive bacteria, presenting low MIC values. This study thus provides information supporting the economic valorization of E. globulus stump wood.
Highlights
These past years have seen an enormous development of the area of natural antioxidants due to the increasing limitations on the use of synthetic antioxidants and enhanced public awareness of health issues [1]
In a continuous search for new plant-derived bioactive compounds and considering the biomass from stumps of Eucalyptus globulus, in this work it was decided to investigate the potential of this raw material as a source of molecules, namely phytochemicals, with antioxidant and antimicrobial activity
A positive linear correlation between Antioxidant Activity Index (AAI) and total phenolic content was observed for all the extracts studied (R2 = 0.9636)
Summary
These past years have seen an enormous development of the area of natural antioxidants due to the increasing limitations on the use of synthetic antioxidants and enhanced public awareness of health issues [1]. Research has focused on the identification of novel antioxidants from natural sources [2,3]. Plant phenolic compounds such as flavonoids, sterols, lignin phenols, and various terpene-related compounds are all potent antioxidants [4]. Many of these compounds have therapeutic properties and are known for their anticarcinogenic, antimutagenic, cardioprotective, antineurodegenerative and antimicrobial activities [4,5,6,7]. Antioxidant activities (measured as the ability to scavenge free radicals) have been reported for cell-wall polysaccharides from a variety of wood sources, including xylan, 4-O-methyl-D-glucurono-D-xylan, galactomannan and galactoglucomannan [2,8,9,10]
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