Water-insoluble antimicrobial active compounds

Volatile or essential oils, as their name implies, are volatile in steam and are generally complex mixtures of hydrocarbons and oxygenated compounds derived from these hydrocarbons. The odour and taste of volatile oils is mainly determined by these oxygenated constituents. In chemical structure, most essential oils are terpenoids in origin. Testing and evaluation of the antimicrobial activity of essential oils is difficult because of their volatility, their water insolubility and their complexity. However, in recent years a large number of studies have been conducted on the antimicrobial activity of essential oils from the Anthemideae tribe. These reports concerned mainly the genera Achillea and Artemisia. 

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