Abstract

ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITY OF TABERNAEMONTANA DIVARICATA (L.) BURKILL

*Meenakshi Vaidya and Mrunalini Sambhare

Abstract

Over three-quarters of the world population relies mainly on plants and plant extracts for health care. More than 30% of the entire plant species, at one time or other, were used for medicinal purposes. Thus, the economic importance of medicinal plants is much more to countries such as India than to rest of the world. Traditional systems of medicine continue to be widely practiced on many accounts. Population rise, inadequate supply of drugs, prohibitive cost of treatments, side effects of several allopathic drugs and development of resistance to currently used drugs for infectious diseases have led to increased emphasis on the use of plant materials as a source of medicines for a wide variety of human ailments. It is strongly believed that detailed information as presented in this review on the phytochemicals and antimicrobial activity of the plant extracts might provide detailed evidence for the use of this plant in different medicines. Tabernaemontana divaricata (Linn.) belongs to family Apocynaceae was used for the present study in which the antimicrobial activity of the leaves was studied. The organisms used for the study were Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli & Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Keywords: Tabernaemontana divaricata, antimicrobial, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli & Saccharomyces cerevisiae.