PHYTOCHEMICALS, ANTIBACTERIAL AND ANTIOXIDATIVE INVESTIGATIONS OF ALHAGI MAURORUM MEDIK.

Abstract

Ethnomedicinally the plant Alhagi maurorum is used for diverse topical infections in the different culture of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan. The aim of the present study is to look into the possible natural tharapy in the form of bioactive fractions which can be further subjected to the isolation of natural products leading towards drug discovery. The methanolic extract and its derived fractions {n-hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate, n-butanol and residual aqueous fraction} of leaves, roots and flowers of Alhagi maurorum are subjected to microbicidy against Salmonella typhe, Staphylococcus aureus, Vibrio cholerae, Shigella dysenteriae, E. coli and Bacillus anthrax, antioxidant profile by DPPH method and preliminary phytochemical investigations. It is observed that the leaves of the plant showed outstanding response to most bacterial pathogens followed by roots while the fractions from flowers were almost inactive. The antibactrial profile of the plant leaves exhibited that the crude extract, chloroform and ethyl acetate fractions showed outsatandinding activities giving above 80% inhibition against B. anthracis. The crude extract showed 80% inhibition against S. dysenteriae. The ethyl acetate and crude extarct was also good against S. typhe with 78.35% and 76.50% inhibition respectively. Extracts/fractions from leaves of the plant showed strong radicle scaving activity, it may be due to the presences of phenolic compounds in plant. Phytochemical screening of crude extracts and its subsequent fractions demonstrated the presence of fats, alkaloids, flavonoids, anthraquinones, cardiac glycosides, coumarins, saponins, phlobatannins, tannins and terpenoids in leaves and roots while the flowers were found to be devoid of any such phytochemical.