Vol. 7, Issue 10 (2018)

Author(s):
Adil Rasool Paray, Mukesh Bhakat, Tushar Kumar Mohanty, Umar Rasool Parry and Shabir Ahmad Lone

Abstract:
Medicinal plants discovered by traditional societies are proving to be an important source of potentially therapeutic drugs and antimicrobial agents. Due to increasing drug resistance, there is need to search new infection-fighting strategies to control microbial infections. Plants represent the richest resource of drugs of traditional systems of medicine, modern medicines, nutraceuticals, food supplements, folk medicines, pharmaceutical intermediates and chemical entities for synthetic drugs. In the present paper, we present a picture of the potential of medicinal plants as source of natural phytochemicals that act as new antimicrobial agents. Plant extracts possess an antimicrobial activity due to presence of various phytochemicals like essential oils or isolated compounds such as alkaloids, trepenoids, lignans and flavonoids, tannins, glycosides, phenolics, sesquiterpene lactones, diterpenes, triterpenes or naphtoquinones, aliphatic compounds, steroids etc. Antimicrobial activity of plant extracts found in folk medicine further depends upon plant material used, techniques employed, growth medium and microorganisms tested. The antimicrobial activity of some known medicinal plants like Azadirachta indica (Neem), Carica papaya (Papita), Curcuma longa (Turmeric), Moringa oleifera (Drumstick tree) and Tinospora cordifolia (Giloy) found in India, has been reviewed in present paper that presents a picture of broad spectrum antimicrobial activity of various plant tissue extracts of these plants. The results of various studies support the folkloric use of these plants in the treatment of infections and various ailments by the people in Indian subcontinent. Thus, the study ascertains the value of plants used in ayurveda, which could be of considerable interest to the development of new antimicrobial drugs.