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BACKGROUND: Plants have important chemical compounds to protect organisms from many mutagens but they may also have dangerous toxic substances that must be tested before use. Lallemantia iberica has been used by local people for treatment of some diseases but it was never tested for its cell protective and antimutagenic/antirecombinogenic properties. In this study, it was aimed to determine the cytoprotective, antimutagenic/antirecombinogenic, antibacterial, antioxidant and phenolic profile of L. iberica by MTS assay, micronucleus test/somatic mutation recombination test (SMART), disc diffusion method, ABTS/DPPH tests and liquid chromatography (LC), respectively. RESULTS: MTS assay results showed that both of the extracts supported the normal growth of healthy human lymphocytes and there was no significant difference between extracts. Although there was no significant increase in micronucleus concentration (‰) of the cultures treated with ethanol or methanol extracts, methanol extract caused slightly lower micronucleus concentration (12.64 ± 3.65‰) than the ethanol extract (24.46 ± 4.50‰). SMART results showed that ethanol and methanol extracts prevented harmful mitotic recombination. Lallemantia iberica also showed antibacterial activity against all of the strains tested, and the largest inhibition zones were observed with Pseudomonas aeruginosa (17.9 mm) and Enterobacter aerogenes (13.8 mm). Methanol extracts showed better antioxidant activities (ABTS IC50: 104.07 μg mL−1, DPPH IC50: 58.8 μg mL−1) than ethanol extracts (ABTS IC50: 344.03 μg mL−1, DPPH IC50: 233.7 μg mL−1). According to the LC results, the most abundant phenolic compounds were rutin hydrate (1796.4 ± 62.9 mg kg−1) and p‐coumaric acid (228.1 ± 7.60 mg kg−1). CONCLUSION: Lallemantia iberica extracts had cell‐protective, antimutagenic/antirecombinogenic, antibacterial and strong antioxidant characteristics in relation to their rich phenolic content. © 2022 Society of Chemical Industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]