Abstract

STUDY OF THE ANTIMICROBIAL AND ANTIOXIDANT POTENTIAL OF SOLVENT EXTRACTS OF RHEUM WEBIANNUM (REVANDCHINI)

Sanjay Sharma*, Abhishek Mathur and Reena Purohit

Abstract

Plants have served as a source of new pharmaceutical products and inexpensive starting materials for the synthesis of some known drugs. Components with medicinal properties from plants play an important role in conventional Western medicine. Natural products and their derivatives represent more than 50% of the drugs in clinical use in the world. One of the paramount reasons for pursuing natural products chemistry resides in the actual or potential pharmacological activity to be found in alkaloids, terpenoids, coumarins, flavanoids, lignans, glycosides etc. Phytochemicals produced in plants are secondary compounds responsible metabolic activities and defense in purpose. Rheum webiannum is also known as Indian or Himalayan rhubarb and Revandchini. In the present investigation, the different solvent extracts viz. Ethyl acetate (ETA), Methanol (MET), Distilled water (AQ), Petroleum ether (PET) and Hexane (HEX) of rhizomes of Rheum webiannum were screened for antimicrobial and antioxidant potential 250 μg/ml. The potent antibacterial extracts viz. ethyl acetate, methanol and aqueous extracts showed least MIC values against the bacterial cultures. The results also showed the potent antioxidant potential of all the extracts. Amongst all the extracts, ethyl acetate and methanol extracts showed significant antioxidant potential. The study thus confirms the presence of antimicrobial and antioxidant compounds in the rhizomes of Revandchini.

Keywords: Rheum webiannum (Rhubarb/Revandchini), solvent extracts, antimicrobial and antioxidant activity.