Antibacterial Properties of Plants

Abstract

Countries like Nepal and India have been using crude plants as medicine since Vedic period. A major part of the total population in developing countries still uses traditional folk medicine obtained from plant resources (Farnsworth: 45). With an estimation of WHO that as many as 80% of world's population living in rural areas rely on herbal traditional medicines as their primary health care, the study on properties and uses of medicinal plants are getting growing interests. In recent years this interest to evaluate plants possessing antibacterial activity for various diseases is growing (Clark and Hufford, 26). Based on local use of common diseases and Ethnobotanical knowledge, an attempt has been made to assess the antibacterial properties of selected medicinal plants.VIZ. Ocimum sanctum (Tulsi), Origanum majorana (Ram Tulsi), Cinnamomum zeylanicum (Dalchini), and Xanthoxylum armatum (Timur), for potential antibacterial activity against 10 medically important bacterial strains, namely Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus cereus, Bacillus thuringiensis, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas spp, Proteus spp, Salmonella Typhi, Escherichia coli, Shigella dysentriae, Klebsiella pneumoniae. The antibacterial activity of ethanol extracts was determined by agar well diffusion method. The plant extracts were more active against Gram-positive bacteria than against Gram-negative bacteria.

Introduction & Background

There are about 250,000 to about 500,000 different species of plants in this world. About 1 to 1 0 percent of them are used for medicinal or antibiotic use. There are many oils and phenolic substances that are made from an antibacterial property from plants. Garlic and flavonoids are some of the few many species of plants that serve numerous antibacterial purposes to the medicinal world.

The use of plants and plant products as medicines could be traced as far back as the beginning of human civilization. The earliest mention of medicinal use of plants in Hindu culture is founds in “Rigveda”, which is said to have been written between 4500-1600 B.C. and is supposed to be the oldest repository of human knowledge. It is Ayurveda, the foundation of medicinal science of Hindu culture, in its eight division deals with specific properties of drugs and various aspects of science of life and the art of healing. (Rastogi and Mehrotra, 86) Medicinal plants are a source of great economic value all over the world. Nature has bestowed on us a very rich botanical wealth and a large number of diverse types of plants grow in different parts of the country. Nepal is rich in all the 3 levels of biodiversity, namely species diversity, genetic diversity and habitat diversity. In Nepal thousands of species are known to have medicinal value and the use of different parts of several medicinal plants to cure specific ailments has been in vogue since ancient times. Herbal medicine is still the mainstay of about 75-80% of the whole population, and the major part of traditional therapy involves the use of plant extract and their active constituents (Akerele, 125). Following the advent of modern medicine, herbal medicine suffered a setback, but during last two or three decades advances in phytochemistry and in identification of ...