Allelochemicals Biologica... - Name

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HIROYUKI NISHIMURA AND ATSUSHI SATOH
chicory roots and reported their activity against microorganisms and small animals
living in soil (Nishimura et al., 2000). In addition, chicory dry-powder has a potential
application in preserving processed foods.
HO
a : R = H, 8-deoxylactucin
b : R = OCOCH 2 C 6 H 4 OH(p), lactupicrin
2. ANTIPATHOGENIC SUBSTANCES
2.1. Antimicrobial Substances in Chicory Root
O
H
O
Figure 1. Insect antifeedants in chicory leaves. Source: Nishimura et al. (2000). Reproduced
after permission from Kluwer Academic Publisher (Springer).
White shoots germinated from cultivated chicory roots have been used for French and
Italian dishes for a long time. We noticed that fungi were not observed on the chicory
root in spite of being placed in moist conditions favorable for the development of rots.
We found that chicory root extracts, recovered with hexane or ether, exhibited antifungal
activities against Cladosporium herbarum, Pyricularia oryzae, Pellicularia sasaki
and Alternaria kikuchiana. The ether extract was fractionated by SiO 2 column
chromatography. Rechromatography in a SiO 2 column and HPLC with a CHCl 3 -MeOH
solvent system revealed three active compounds. Two of these were sesquiterpenoids
(C-1 and C-2) identified as cichoralexin (Monde et al., 1990) and 10αhydroxycichopumilide,
respectively, by the interpretation of spectral data. From the
interpretation of its spectral data, the third compound (C-3) was identified as 8αangeloyloxy-cichoralexin
(Figure 2) (Nishimura et al., 2000). These three
sesquiterpenoids, cichoralexin, 10α-hydroxycichopumilide and 8αangeloyloxycichoralexin
from the chicory root were found to have significant
antimicrobial properties.
O
H
R