Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus responsible for bovine mastitis sensitivity to the essential oil of Algerian Thymus fontanesii Boiss. et Reut.

The aim of this study is to test two different methods for evaluating the in vitro antibacterial effect of Thymus fontanesii Boiss. et Reut. essential oil against standard and clinical bacterial strains responsible for bovine mastitis: the disc diffusion method or the aromatogram which allows the demonstration of the antibacterial power of essential oils on the bacterial strains tested, Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923 and two strains isolated from bovine mastitis milk S. aureus and E. coli. The inhibition activity of the essential oil of T. fontanesii on bacterial strains by the two methods shows that the antimicrobial power of this oil is very important and is characterized by bactericidal and bacteriostatic action against gram negative and gram positive bacteria. The antimicrobial evaluation by the aromatogram showed good antibacterial activity against all the strains tested, the zones of inhibition of the bacteria were between 23,33±1,527mm and 37,5±3,535 mm. The search for minimum inhibitory concentrations MIC and bactericides CMB made it possible to quantitatively assess the antimicrobial power of this essential oil. In this work, the MIC was 0,625 µl/ml for all strains tested, and the lowest CMB was that of T. fontanesii against E. coli ATCC 25922 was 0,625 µl/ml.