Online ISSN: 2515-8260

PHYTOCHEMICAL SCREENING AND CHARACTERIZATION OF WITHANIA SOMNIFERA FOR THEIR ANTIMICROBIAL AND ANTIOXIDANTACTIVITY

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Ms. Nikita Pathak and Alok Kumar Srivastav

Abstract

Ayurveda is one of the traditional medicinal systems of Indian culture. The philosophy behind Ayurveda is preventing unnecessary suffering and living a long healthy life. Ayurveda involves the use of natural elements to eliminate the root cause of a disease by restoring balance and at the same time creating a healthy life-style to prevent the recurrence of imbalance. Herbal medicines have existed world-wide with long recorded history. World Health Organization (WHO) have estimated that 80% of the world’s inhabitants still rely on traditional medicines for their health care. India is well-known to be one of the major biodiversity centre with about 45,000 plant species, including 15,000 medicinal plants. The concept of polyherbalism is to achieve greater therapeutic efficacy. The active phytochemical constituents of individual plants are insufficient to achieve the desirable therapeutic effects. When combining this research mainly focuses on the importance of polyherbalism and its clinical significance. For this study medicinal plant Withaniasomniferahave been taken and extracted for their study of anti-bacterial and antioxidant activity. The phytochemical compounds were screened by qualitative analysis method and the detected phytochemicals are tannins, saponins, alkaloids, phenols, terpenoids, flavonoids. Thedifferentsolventssuchasmethanol,petroleumether,chloroformandaqueouswereusedto extract the bioactive compounds from various parts of the selected medicinal plants. The anti-bacterial activity were demonstrated against the bacterial strains like Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosaby disc-diffusion method. The anti-oxidant activity was evaluated by DPPH radical scavenging method. The multiple herbs in a particular ratio, it will result a better therapeutic effect and reduced the toxicity.

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