Background and objectives: Garden lettuce, Lactuca sativa L. (Asteraceae), is an herbaceous plant cultivated in different parts of Iran including Isfahan. In Iranian traditional medicine, it is classified as a medicinal food because it is nutritive and has therapeutic effects. As the therapeutic effects of the plant parts may be related to some volatile active constitu...

BACKGROUND Essential oils, as secondary plant compounds, present a safer alternative to conventional insecticides in insect control programs. So five essential oils including eucalyptus, mint, yarrow, oregano and rosemary oils were evaluated against the brown-banded cockroach Supella longipalpa. METHODS Evaluation was done against the 3rd and 4th instar nymphs using three bioassay methods; co...

Reducing the reliance on fishery by-products as amino acid and fatty acid sources in feeds for farmed fish is a major objective today. We evaluated the effect of dietary fish oil or dietary fishmeal replacement by vegetable oils and plant proteins respectively through analysis of hepatic transcriptomes in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). Fish were fed right from first feeding with diets bas...

Background: Thymus daenensis is on e of the endemic aromatic species in Iran that its essential oil is used in food and pharmaceutical industries. Objective: In this study, the effects of plant growth stages and distillation methods on essential oil content and thymol percentage of this species were evaluated. Methods: The aerial parts of Th. daenensis were collected in three stages of plan...

Fatty acids made in chloroplasts must be exported into the rest of the cell to be converted into commercially important plant oils. A new study identifies FAX1 as a protein that mediates this crucial transport step. Read the Research Article.

Background:Eugenia species are appreciated for their edible fruits and are known as having anticonvulsant, antimicrobial and insecticidal actions. Methods: The plant material was collected in the southeastern Pará state of Brazil and submitted to hydrodistillation. GC-MS analyzed the oils, and their antioxidant and cytotoxic activities were evaluated by the DPPH and MTT assays. Results: The mai...

With therapeutic properties based on their chemical composition, essential oils—extracts from herbs, flowers, and other plant materials—have been used to treat symptoms and diseases for thousands of years. However, the term aromatherapy was not used until French chemist Gattefosse published a text in 1936. Clinical aromatherapy is defined as the use of essential oils for therapeutic purposes th...

In this study we evaluated and reported repellent effects of essential oils from Thai plants against 4 mosquito vectors: Aedes aegypti, Ae. albopictus, Anopheles. dirus and Culex quinquefasciatus under laboratory conditions using human volunteers. The essential oils were extracted from 18 plant species, belonging to 11 families, and the oils were then prepared as 10% solution in absolute ethano...

The fungicidal effect of some essential oils against Alternaria solani one of the species that cause early blight of potato was evaluated under in vitro and field conditions. Effect of carnation, caraway, thyme oils and the chemical fungicide Ridomil MZ 72 at various concentrations on mycelial growth of A. solani was tested. Carnation oil had the strongest and most extensive inhibitory effect o...

Mosquito repellent plants are used in the rural areas of Zimbabwe despite the fact that very few of them have been biologically evaluated. Leaves of the plant Lippia javanica, were collected from Mumurwi village, Zimbabwe and evaluated for repellency against laboratory reared Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Major plant compounds were identified using Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) and Mass Spectrome...