Potravinarstvo Slovak Journal of Food Sciences Volume 13 363 No. 1/2019 Potravinarstvo Slovak Journal of Food Sciences vol. 13, 2019, no. 1, p. 363-368 https://doi.org/10.5219/1054 Received: 12 March 2019. Accepted: 12 March 2019. Available online: 28 May 2019 at www.potravinarstvo.com © 2019 Potravinarstvo Slovak Journal of Food Sciences, License: CC BY 3.0 ISSN 1337-0960 (online) ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITY OF RESVERATROL AND GRAPE POMACE EXTRACT Simona Kunová, Soňa Felšöciová, Eva Tvrdá, Eva Ivanišová, Attila Kántor, Jana Žiarovská, Margarita Terentjeva, Miroslava Kačániová ABSTRACT Resveratrol is commonly found in food and drinks, including red wine and grapes. Grape extracts have a potent antimicrobial activity in vitro. The antimicrobial activity of plant extracts is the base of their potential application in food preservation agents, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, alternative drugs and natural therapies. The aim of our study was to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of resveratrol and Blue Frankish pomace extract against Grampositive and Gramnegative bacteria as well as yeasts from the genus Candida. Six bacterial strains (three Grampositive bacteria Staphylococcus aureus CCM 2461, Enterococcus faecalis CCM 4224 and Listeria monocytogenes CCM 4699; three Gramnegative bacteria Escherichia coli CCM 3988, Pseudomonas aeruginosa CCM 1959 and Salmonella enteritidis subsp. enteritidis CCM 4420) and three yeast strains (Candida albicans CCM 8186, Candida krusei CCM 8271 and Candida tropicalis CCM 8223) were evaluated using the antimicrobial assay. Pure resveratrol and grape pomace extracts of red variety Blue Frankish were used. Our results show that resveratrol and red grape pomace extract have a very good antimicrobial activity against Grampositive bacteria when compared with Gramnegative bacteria and yeasts. Keywords: grape pomace extract; resveratrol; pathogenic bacteria and yeasts; antimicrobial activity INTRODUCTION Winemaking is currently one of the most relevant agro- industrial activities in the world. Undoubtedly, grapes are an abundant fruit crop worldwide, with Vitis vinifera being the species most frequently cultivated for wine production (Pareja et al., 2015; Barba et al., 2016). Resveratrol (3,5,4′-trihydroxystilbene) is a naturally occurring stilbenoid which has been gaining considerable attention in the medical field due to its diverse biological activities – it has been reported to exhibit antioxidant, cardioprotective, anti-diabetic, anticancer, and antiaging properties. Given that resveratrol is a phytoalexin, exhibiting an increased synthesis in response to infection by phytopathogens, there has been interest in exploring its antimicrobial activity (Chan, 2002). Although there is still very limited work on the antibacterial activity of resveratrol, it has been shown that resveratrol exhibits antibacterial activity against several Gram-positive and Gram-negative foodborne bacteria (Chan, 2002; Tegos et al., 2002; Paulo et al., 2010; Paolillo, Carratelli and Rizzo, 2011; Alvarez, Moreira and Ponce, 2012; Alvarez, Ponce and Moreira, 2013; Kumar et al., 2012; Plumed-Ferrer et al., 2013; Augustine et al., 2014; Ferreira et al., 2014; Morán et al., 2014; Promgool, Pancharoen and Deachathai, 2014; Subramanian, Soundar and Mangoli, 2016; Duarte et al., 2015; Kim et al., 2014; Makwana et al., 2015; Ferreira and Domingues, 2016; Liu et al., 2016; Seukep et al., 2016; Silva et al., 2016; Surendran Nair et al., 2016; Klancnik et al., 2016; Lai, Chiu and Chiou, 2017; Lee and Lee, 2017; Oliveira, Domingues and Ferreira, 2017). Based on the available literature, resveratrol has been demonstrated to exhibit different antibacterial activities against numerous strains of foodborne pathogens including Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, Bacillus subtilis, and Listeria monocytogenes, E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella Typhimurium, Vibrio cholera, Campylobacter jejuni, Campylobacter coli, Arcobacter butzleri, and Arcobacter cryaerophilus (Ma et al., 2018). Grape pomace is a potential source of natural antioxidant and antimicrobial agents. The phenolic compounds in grape pomace extracts exhibit antioxidant, anticancer, and antidiabetic properties (Ruberto et al., 2007; Hogan et al., 2009; Parry et al., 2011; Zhou and Raffoul, 2012; González-Centeno et al., 2013; Snopek et al., 2018), as well as antibacterial activity against E. coli, L. monocytogenes, and S. aureus (Ozkan et al., 2004; Darra et al., 2012). More recently, the impact of the gastrointestinal digestion step on the phytochemical content in food, and on their bioactivities (mainly antioxidant capacity), have attracted special attention, which is evidenced by a great number of publications dedicated to this theme