Artemisia mesatlantica is an endemic species of Morocco, rare and endangered which is widely used in traditional medicine. This present work deals with the chemical composition and the antibacterial and antifungal efficacy of the EO of the domesticated Artemisia mesatlantica. The average yield of essential oil of the aerial part (stems, leaves and flowers) of this latter is 0.97%. Among the chemical constituents of the essential oil of A. mesatlantica are β-thujone (77.77%) which is predominant, followed by 1.8-cineol (6.31%), and camphor (3.52%) the other constituents are with small percentages. About the antimicrobial test, four bacterial strains (Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus and Micrococcus luteus) and three fungal strains (Aspergillus niger, Penicillium digitatum, Penicillium expansum) were chosen for their pathogenicity and for their frequent involvement in food contamination. The bioassay shows that the minimum inhibitory concentration of the growth of the following microorganisms: Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Micrococcus luteus, Penicillium expansum, Penicillium digitatum is 1/500 v/v whereas Bacillus subtilis and Aspergillus niger is 1/250 v / v.

Four cities in southern Morocco, namely Es-Smara, Laayoune, Boujdour and Dakhla, have been targeted by the ethnobotanical study of medicinal plants used in the traditional pharmacopoeia of the local population in order to highlight popular knowledge and know-how and to establish a catalog of the medicinal plants used and their therapeutic uses. The results showed that medicinal plants are used by people of both sexes belonging to different age groups and socio-economic and intellectual levels. The leaves are the most used parts and the decoction constitutes the essential preparation of the vegetable drugs in the traditional herbal medicine. In addition, digestive pathologies are the major therapeutic indications for the use of medicinal plants. The most families represented in the medicinal flora used in the studied regions of the Moroccan Sahara are Lamiaceae, Asteraceae, Chenopodiaceae, Convolvulaceae, Apiaceae and Liliaceae. The results of this ethnobotanical study could be an important source of information and a database for further research in the fields of phytochemistry and pharmacology in order to find new bioactive molecules.