Antibacterial Effect of Aqueous Extracts of Spices and Herbs against Bacteria Isolated from Frozen Meat

This study investigated the antibacterial activity of nine aqueous plant extracts (bitter fennel, black tea, ginger, turmeric, nutmeg, coriander, cubeb, dry black lemon and senna), some sterilizers and some Hand Sanitizers against bacteria (Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus isolated from meat), with the aim of sterilizing the contaminated hand with meat, where the results showed that the sterilizers used had variant effects against obtained bacteria from this experiment, and also showed the antibacterial activity of aqueous plant extracts against these bacteria, where Black dry lime and Senna extracts had a strong antibacterial activity against both bacteria in this study, while Nutmeg extract had a weak antibacterial activity, the other extracts did not have any effect against these two bacteria.
It appeared from the well diffusion technique that Black dry lime inhibited E. coli and S. aureus and the inhibition zones were (30, 29, 25, 15, and 9) mm and (33, 30, 30, 25 and 20) mm respectively at (100, 75, 50, 25 and 12.5) %, and the inhibition zone was 22 mm for Senna against E. coli at 100%, while Nutmeg inhibited S. aureus at the concentration 100% and the inhibition zone was 17 mm. The MIC was determined for all extracts against both bacteria, and S. aureus in general was more susceptible comparing with E. coli.