Thymus capitatus and Thymus broussonnetii are two Moroccan endemic medicinal plants used traditionally by the local population. The present study aims to investigate their essential oil chemical composition, antioxidant and antibacterial activities. The chemical composition of the essential oils was determined using the GC-MS analysis, the antioxidant activity assessed using DPPH and FRAP methods while the antimicrobial activity was evaluated against nine bacteria species tested (Enterococcus faecalis, Serratia fonticola, Acinetobacter baumannii, Klebsiella oxytoca, sensitive Klebsiella pneumoniae, sensitive Escherichia coli, resistant Escherichia coli, resistant Staphylococcus aureus and Enterobacter aerogenes). The major identified compounds of T. capitatus essential oil where carvacrol (75%) and p-cymene (10.58%) while carvacrol (60.79%), thymol (12.9%), p-cymene (6.21%) and γ-terpinene (4.47%) are the main compounds in T. broussonnetii essential oil. The bioactivity of the essential oils of the two species of thyme was explained by their richness in oxygenated monoterpenes known for their great effectiveness with an IC50 of 3.48 ± 0.05 and 4.88 ± 0.04 μL/mL and EC50 of 0.12 ± 0.01 and 0.20 ± 0.02 μL/mL in the DPPH and FRAP assays, respectively, with an important antibacterial activity. These results encourage the use of these plants as a source of natural antioxidants, and antibacterial additives, to protect food from oxidative damage and to eliminate bacteria that are responsible for nosocomial infections.

Essential oils (EO) extracted from medicinal and aromatic plants (MAP) have proven to be good sources of bioactive compounds with antibacterial and antioxidant properties. This work presents the study of the chemical composition of Essential Oil extracted from Lavandula Pedunculata from the middle atlas of Morocco and its antioxidant and antibacterial power. The EO was obtained by hydrodistillation and analyzed by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. The antibacterial power of EO was estimated by the disk diffusion method against six bacterial species stemming from the hospital. Antioxidant activity was tested by two methods: measuring the trapping power of DPPH radical and measuring the Ferric Reducing/Antioxidant Potential (FRAP). The chromatographic analysis of Lavandula Pedunculata essential oil allowed the identification of 55 compounds representing 98.9% of the essential oil, of which the major compounds are camphor (44.16%), 1 –epi-cubenol (8.61%), fenchone (7.48%), camphene (6.45%) and α-pinene (4.86%). Antibacterial power tests showed that L. Pedunculata EO effect on all the tested bacteria is lower than that of the most powerful Antibiotic and even powerless on certain strains. The obtained results from antioxidant power tests by both methods proved the antioxidant power of Lavandula Pedunculata EO but was less effective than ascorbic acid. The obtained results indicate that the plant EO’s antibacterial and antioxidant activities are not powerful compared to antibiotics and ascorbic acid respectively, but enough to explain the traditional therapeutic use of the plant.