Chemical composition and antimicrobial activity of essential oils from Scabiosa arenaria Forssk: growing wild in Tunisia.

The essential oils isolated from three organs, i.e., fruits, stems and leaves, and flowers, of the endemic North African plant Scabiosa arenaria Forssk. were screened for their chemical composition, as well as their possible antibacterial, anticandidal, and antifungal properties. According to the GC-FID and GC/MS analyses, 61 (99.26% of the total oil composition), 79 (98.43%), and 51 compounds (99.9%) were identified in the three oils, respectively. While α-thujone (34.39%), camphor (17.48%), and β-thujone (15.29%) constituted the major compounds of the fruit oil, chrysanthenone (23.43%), together with camphor (12.98%) and α-thujone (10.7%), were the main constituents of the stem and leaf oil. In the case of the flower oil, also chrysanthenone (38.52%), camphor (11.75%), and α-thujone (9.5%) were identified as the major compounds. Furthermore, the isolated oils were tested against 16 Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, four Candida species, and nine phytopathogenic fungal strains. It was found that the oils exhibited interesting antibacterial and anticandidal activities, comparable to those of thymol, which was used as positive control, but no activity against the phytopathogenic fungal strains was observed.