Chinese Bulletin of Botany ›› 2020, Vol. 55 ›› Issue (5): 644-657.DOI: 10.11983/CBB20029

• SPECIAL TOPICS • Previous Articles    

Antimicrobial Activity of Aromatic Plant Essential Oils and Their Application in Animal Production

Yuanpeng Hao1,2,†, Jingyi Li1,†, Rui Yang1,2, Hui Li1, Hongtong Bai1, Lei Shi1,*()   

  1. 1Key Laboratory of Plant Resources/Beijing Botanical Garden, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China
    2University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
  • Received:2020-02-24 Accepted:2020-07-21 Online:2020-09-01 Published:2020-09-03
  • Contact: Lei Shi
  • About author:

    These authors contributed equally to this paper

Abstract: Essential oils (EOs), volatile oily liquid extracted from aromatic plants, are vital secondary metabolites with the characteristic odor. The antimicrobial activities are determined by chemical compositions and concentrations of EOs. Of these, phenols, oxygenous terpenoids and terpenes possess significant antimicrobial activities. The antimicrobial mechanisms of EOs mainly involve in the alteration of fatty acids outer membrane, damaging of cytoplasmic membrane, depletion of proton-motive force and leakage of metabolites and ions. In the production systems of animal husbandry, misuse of antibiotics leads to the generation of “super bacteria”, and antibiotic residues cause the problems of animal by-products unsafety and environmental pollution. Aromatic EOs serve as natural antimicrobial agents with advantages of low toxicity and no residues, thus EOs can be used as feed additives to replace the antibiotics for animal health. This review article describes the active compounds and antimicrobial mechanisms of aromatic EOs as well as their applications in animal production, and emphasizes the application of new technologies in the research of antimicrobial mechanisms. This article will provide the theoretical basis for the application of aromatic EOs in the animal production.

Key words: aromatic plant essential oil, chemical composition, antimicrobial activity, antibiotic alternatives, animal production