Abstract

PHYTOCHEMICAL EVALUATION OF DIFFERENT SOLVENT EXTRACTS OF A TRADITIONAL MEDICINAL PLANT

Umera Begam A. K.* and Senthil Kumar R**

Abstract

Medicinal plants have bioactive compounds which are used for curing of various human diseases and also play an important role in healing. Phytochemicals have two categories i.e., primary and secondary metabolites. Primary constituents have chlorophyll, proteins sugar and amino acids. Secondary constituents contain terpenoids and alkaloids. Medicinal plants are proved to have antifungal, antibacterial, antioxidant, antidiabetic, hepatoprotective and anti-inflammatory activities. Solanum torvum is a plant growing in many parts of the world. Their fruits are edible, can withstand heavy drought and with good nutritional content and is investigated in this study for its phytoconstituents in different solvent extracts. In the present work different extracts of Solanum torvum fruits were analyzed for their phytochemical constituents which may probable be responsible for various pharmacological activity of the plant and also to quantitate the essential constituents which is believed to be more contributory to these activities. The analysis revealed the presence of phytoconstituents such as flavonoids, alkaloids, phenolic compounds, saponins, terpenoids, tannins, carbohydrates etc. Further, some of these chemical constituents were also quantitatively estimated.

Keywords: Solanum torvum, aqueous extract, phytoconstituents.