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Commentary | DOI: https://doi.org/
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Copyright: © Monique Mancuso. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of The Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Received: 30 November -0001 | Accepted: 14 December 2018 | Published: 19 December 2018
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Abstract
Several studies have indicated that aromatic and medicinal plants are good sources of antimicrobial agents and pharmaceuticals; in fact thanks to their antimicrobial properties they can protect against pathogens (i.e. bacteria, fungi etc..) (Cowan 1999;Sengul et al. 2009; Abdallah 2011; Namita and Mukesh 2012; Mancuso 2017).
The use of plants and herbs for food preservation as a natural alternative to synthetic chemicals is increasing, (Proestos et al. 2006) in this contextm the author decided to highlight the importance of two Brassicaeae: Wasabia japonica and Armoracia rusticana.Wasabi (Wasabia japonica), also called Japanese horseradishgrows naturally along stream beds in cool, shady, high humidity mountainous areas in Japan, China, Korea, New Zealand, and North America (Trzcinska and Hołubowicz, 2016; Lu et al. 2016); while horseradish is a perennial plant from south-east Europe (Mucete et al. 2006).
They are used as medical herb and are currently used in cooking, a paste is produced from their roots that is a pungent condiment for many dishes including sushi.
Lately they are object of studies thanks to their chemical characteristics, in fact both contain isothiocyanates (ITCs) (allyl isothiocyanate: >90%; 2-phenylethyl isothiocyanate: 4-10%) whose are released by enzimatic degradation of the glucosinolates (Mucete et al. 2006). The ITCs have the biggest bacterial, bacteriostatic and antifungal effects (Conaway 2002; Dufour et al. 2015). Moreover is well know that the allyl isothiocyanate possess antimicrobial effects against some human pathogens such as: Escherichia coli O157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella Typhimurium, Sthaphylocossus aureus and Vibrio parahaemolyticus, and against mold and yeast (Chacon et al. 2016; Lu et al. 2016). Wasaby showed antibacterial activity against Helicobacter pylori (Shin et al. 2004), Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Staphylococcus aureus (Lu et al. 2006).
Also horseradish showed antimicrobial activities against human pathogens (Park et al. 2013), Staphylococcus aureus, Acinetobacter baumanii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Kim et al. 2015).
Moreover, horseradish showed bactericidal activity versus pathogenic fish bacteria also. In particular versus: Tenacibaculum marinum, Vibrio harvey and Vibrio alginolyticus, Aeromonas hydrophila, Aeromonas salmonicida, Pseudomonas anguilliseptica and Photobacterium damselae subsp. piscicida (Manuguerra et al. 2018). For these reasons the study of wasabi and horseradish and their application in food industry is very important both to enhance immune defense that to be applied in food industry.