Abstract:
The term medicinal plants include a various types of plants used in herbal medicine and some
of these plants have medicinal activities. These medicinal plants consider as a rich resources
of ingredients which can be used in drug development and synthesis. The aim of this study
was phytochemical Screening of secondary metabolites and to evaluate antibacterial activities
of Calpurnia aurea root extracts. The extraction of the test medicinal plant for crude extract
was carried out by maceration method (a required amount of sample was dissolved in agiven
extraction solvent for 72hrs then with 3 or 4hr gap the sample were agitated or shaked to
increase the amount of the desired sample). Phytochemical screening for the petroleum ether,
ethanol, methanol and distilled water crude extracts of the plant roots were carried following
standard methods. Antibacterial activities of the crude extracts were evaluated using the agar
disk diffusion method. Foodborne bacterial pathogens used for this study viz. Staphylococcus
aureus, Bacillus cereus, Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhi. The results of this study
showed that petroleum, ethanol, methanol and distilled water extracts used against the test
strains at a concentrations of 100, 50 and 25mg/ml were showed antibacterial activity,
however, none of the crude extracts had antibacterial activity at a concentrations of
12.5mg/ml against all the selected bacterial species. Petroleum ether extract had better
activity at concentration of 100,50, and 25mg/ml (18,12 and 6.5 mean inhibition mm) against
S.aureus, B. cereus, E. coli and S. typhi ,and distilled water extract had good antibacterial
activity at 100mg/ml toward the selected test organisms but at 25 mg /ml S. typhi was not
sensitive. All the extracts had no activity against any of the test strains at 12.5 mg/ml which is
a minimum inhibitory concentration. It could be concluded that extracts root of Calpurnea
aurea had some promising activity against human pathogens and further detailed
investigation using sensitivity analytical techniques are recommended for better exploitation
of the plant products in various applications
