Composição química e atividade antimicrobiana dos óleos essenciais dos diferentes tecidos de Morinda citrifolia Linn. Rubiaceae

Abstract

Throughout the centuries, plants have been used and studied because they contain several substances that are responsible for pharmacological actions. The plant are widely used in folk medicine due to the biological properties of its fruits, is the Morinda citrifolia L., popularly known as noni. The Morinda citrifolia is member of the family Rubiaceae. It is a plant native to Southeast Asia and has received good acceptance in Brazil due to its biological activities. Morinda citrifolia has exploded in population and use; and because of it, carefully studied. Inserted in this context, the present work has the objective to present the chemical characterization of the essential oils of the different plant tissues and the evaluation of its antimicrobial potential. The essential oils of the Morinda citrifolia were obtained by hydrodistillation and the identification of their chemical constituents is determined by GC-MS. In short, the stem oil p-Menta-1- (7), 8-diene was identified as the major compound with a relative percentage of 9.64%, followed by the compound allyl decanoate (7.50%). In the leaf oil, phytol was identified as the major compound with 49.32%. In the essential fruit oil, octanoic acid was identified with 38.68%, hexanoic acid (20,00%) and methyl octanoate (16.98%). After the esterification reaction used by the carboxylic acids, the essential oils were methyl hexanoate (12.15%), methyl octanoate (83.38%) and methyl decanoate (4.46%). The essential oil of the fruits showed moderate to strong antimicrobial activity, being observed a greater activity against the fungi Candida albicans and Candida utilis with MIC from 39 μg/ml to 78.1 μg/ml, respectively. The essential oil of the fruits showed activity against all the bacteria tested, with a lower MIC of 156 μg/ml observed for Bacillus subtilis and the highest of 625 μg/ml for Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The results obtained contribute to the chemical and biological knowledge of Morinda citrifolia, which is widely reported as an excellent plant for therapeutic purposes.