Phytochemical and antimicrobial studies on the leaves of Solanum torvum Linn

Abstract

Modern pharmacopoeia still contain at least 25% drugs derived from plants and many others which are synthetic analogues built on prototype compounds isolated from plants. The work is being pursued on the phytochemical, antimicrobial and antioxidant investigation on the leaves of Spilanthes acmella. Successive extraction of the crushed leaves of the plants has been done with various solvents and these extracts were tested quantitatively. These extracts were further tested for their antimicrobial activity against the bacterial strains of Escherichia coli, Bacillus cereus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Micrococcus luteus, Klebsiella pneumonaie and against the fungal strains of Aspergillus niger, Penicillum chrysogenum, Rhizopus arrhigus, Rhizopus stolonifer. The results have shown that the ethyl acetate and methanol extracts can act as a standard drug against the becterial strain of Klebsiella pneumonaie and the water and ethyl acetate extract also showed very good activity against the fungal strains of Rhizopus stolonifer and Rhizopus arrhigus.