The Chemical Composition of the Mentha pulegium L. Essential Oil from Egypt and its Antioxidant Activity

The essential oil components of the Mentha Pulegium were isolated via hydrodistillation and analyzed by using GC-MS. The oil was found to contain 53 components. The main compounds were, pulegone (43.5 %), piperitone (12.2 %), p-menthane-1,2,3-triol (6.5 %), γ-elemenene (3.6 %), guaiene (cis-β) (3.0 %), carvacrol acetate (2.6 %) and phenyl ethyl alcohol (2.4 %).The essential oil of Mentha pulegium L. belonged to pulegone chemotype because, the oil is rich in pulegone (43.5 %). The antioxidant activities of essential oil, dichloromethane and ethanol extracts of Mentha pulegium L. leaves were examined using hexanal/hexanoic and DPPH assays. Dichloromethane extracts exhibited the highest activity, inhibiting hexanal oxidation by 94 ± 5 % at the 200μg/mL level over 40 days. As well as ethanol extract exhibited the greatest scavenging activities among the all extracts 79.3 ± 3 % which extracted from the Mentha pulegium L. leaves at the 500 μg/mL level. It was found that the two different methods exhibited consistent antioxidant activities in the present study. We can conclude that the Mentha pulegium L. could be used as potential sources of safe and inexpensive flavour as well as antioxidants to prevent oxidation in different food products.