Medicinal plants: Antimicrobial activity and their phytochemicals

The investigation is attempted to evaluate antimicrobial activity with different solvent and water extracts of 30 plant species belonging to 29 genera spreads in 23 families which are considered as potential medicinal plants, using some human pathogenic bacteria and fungal species. Different extracts (increasing polarity of solvent) obtained from different parts of the plants were tested against bacteria like Bacillus subtilis, Enterococcus faecalis, Micrococcus luteus, Staphylococcus aureus, (Gram-positive), Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Proteus vulgaris, Streptococcus faecalis (Gram-negative) and fungal species like Aspergillus niger, Candida albicans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae.Of all plant extracts tested, crude extracts from 26 plant species (86.6%) were found to possess an activity against at least one or more tested microorganisms. The statistical analysis of secondary metabolites among 30 potential drug yielding plants revealed 28 major groups of compounds. ether, methanol and water extracts gave positive results for the presence of alkaloids (93.3 %) followed by flavones (83.3 %)triterpenoids (76.6 %) and reducing compounds are recorded.