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Synthetic preservatives have commonly been used to preserve foods, but their use is decreasing because of safety concerns. Therefore, a large number of trials involving naturally sourced antimicrobial substances have been undertaken in an effort to find more acceptable natural alternatives. Prunus mume is an alkaline food which has abundant organic acids (succinic acid, citric acid, malic acid and tartaric acid), sitosterol, and minerals, and has been commonly used in folk remedies and Chinese medicine over very long period. In this study, we undertook to isolate and identify the antimicrobial substance in the butanol fraction of Prunus mune shich proved the most effective fraction for antimicrobial activity against Salmonella typhimurium, a problematic food-borne pathogen. Prunus mume was fractionated into petroleum ether, chloroform, ethyl acetate and butanol, In order to eliminate sugars from the butanol fraction, it was passed through a Sephadex LH-20 column and the antimicrobial substance was isolated by silica gel column chromatography. The active fraction was further fractionated on the basis of antimicrobial testing and the fraction with greatest antimicrobial activity was analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). As a result, trimethyl citrate and hexanedioic acid were tentatively identified as the antimicrobial substances in the butanol fraction of Prunus mume.
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