Antimicrobial screening of essential oils and extracts of some Humulus lupulus L. cultivars.

The essential oils as well as solvent extracts of 11 hop cultivars, 1 hop variety and a wild type of hop were screened for their antimicrobial activities using the agar overlay technique. The oils were isolated from the cones of the various hop plants by hydrodistillation, the extracts were obtained by soaking the hop cones in chloroform. The oils and the extracts showed activity against the Gram-positive bacteria (Bacillus subtilis and Staphylococcus aureus) and the fungus (Trichophyton mentagrophytes var. interdigitale), but almost no activity against the Gram-negative bacterium (Escherichia coli) and the yeast (Candida albicans) used in the screening. The peak area percentages of the main volatile components and the contents of the bitter acids of the extracts were determined for all cultivars using chromatographic methods.