Key words: supercritical extraction, carbon dioxide, garlic, extract, allyl disulfides, biocides
Garlic (Allium sativum L.) extracts, obtained by supercritical CO2 extraction, are fractionated into individual components using preparative High Performance Liquid Chromatography/Gas Chromatography. Several new unsymmetrical allyl disulfides are synthesized. All obtained synthetic substances and garlic individual components were tested as potential antimicrobial agents using the following test systems: Candida utilis, Bacillus cereus, Pseudomonas aurantiaca and Escherichia coli. Synthetic unsymmetrical allyl disulfides (SUAD) are shown to reveal antimicrobial activity compared to individual garlic components. Moreover, in some cases they are more effective than widely used floxacin antibiotics. These results give evidence to consider SUAD as prospective antibacterial pharmaceutical agents.