Antimicrobial Products from Plant Biodiversity

Plant-derived medicinal compounds are rich sources of bioactive compounds used for health benefits and have a long history, which formed the basis for the evolution of many modern medicines. These medicinal compounds comprise various groups of secondary metabolites, having antimicrobial activity, exist in healthy plants, and activated in response to pathogen attacks and tissue damages. These compounds displayed a broad range of pharmaceutical and positive health effects on humans by antioxidative, antimicrobial, antiviral, anticancer, and anti-inflammatory activities. Hence, it attracts researchers to identify and isolate these compounds, to understand the mechanism of action, thus providing the molecular mechanism of conquering resistance in microbes. Nowadays, reemerging and new infectious diseases are rising, therefore there is an urgent need to explore a new plants-based antimicrobial compounds having a novel mode of action against microbes. Additionally, the evolution of multiple drug-resistant strains of human pathogens developed higher attention by healthcare and pharmaceutical industries toward plant-derived compounds. Therefore, here we will focus on plant products used as antimicrobial substances and their mode of action against microbes. This chapter aims to provide recent insights into the possibilities of the important plant-derived antimicrobial compounds, useful as an alternative approach to combat infectious.