Antibacterial Activity of Adansonia digitata L.: A Globally Endangered Tree

Abstract

The tree species of Adansonia digitata L. possesses wide range of medicinal properties effective against various infectious diseases. The present work has been under taken to study the antibacterial activity of different extracts of A. digitata against pathogenic bacteria. Antibacterial activity of methanolic extracts of leaf, flower and fruit wall extracts of A. digitata has been studied to find out their activity against pathogenic bacteria viz., Escherichia coli, Proteus vulgaris, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus and Enterobacter aerogenus. The activity of these extracts of different plant parts against both positive as well as negative pathogenic bacterial strains was screened through well diffusion technique by using minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) method. According to our observations, all the extracts of A. digitata exhibited antibacterial activity against all the pathogenic bacteria under study except the fruit wall extracts which didn’t show any inhibition against K. pneumonia. Thus, results provided evidence that the species A. digitata can be used as a potential source of antibacterial agent in the treatment of various infectious diseases.