Abstract
Moringa oleifera, a plant with medicinal property is analyzed for its phytochemical constituents present in leaves, stem and bark in fresh and powdered form.Different solvents such as ethanol, hot water and cold water were used for making the extract of all three plant parts (leaves, stem and bark).The fresh plant parts like leaves, stem and bark show presence of maximum secondary metabolites in cold and hot water in comparison to extract in ethanol.The powdered form of leaves, stem and bark shows presence of steroids, flavanoids, volatile oils etc. in ethanolic as well as in hot and cold water extract.Antimicrobial activity was observed against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Streptococcus mutans and Candida albicans using powdered extract in all the three solvents by agar well diffusion method using pure ethanol as control.The ethanolic extract of the bark showed a broad spectrum of antimicrobial activities against all test organisms with highest zone of inhibition (10 mm) to E. coli.Hot water extract of leaves showed inhibition against P. aeruginosa (10 mm).The ethanolic leaf extracts showed an inhibition of 4 mm and 9 mm to S. aureus and C. albicans, respectively.In cold water, leaves extract was effective against P. aeruginosa and C. albicans (6 mm and 3 mm, respectively).The stem extract in ethanol showed antimicrobial activities against C. albicans (8 mm) only while in hot water showed antimicrobial activities against P. aeruginosa and S. mutans (4 mm and 2 mm, respectively) and in cold water effective against S. aureus only.Staphylococcus aureus was found to be the most sensitive test organism to different extracts of Moringa oleifera.It may be concluded that M. oleifera may be a potential source for the treatment of different infections caused by the resistant microbes.