Pharmacological screening of heartwood of Tectona grandis Linn.for antibacterial activity by Agar-Well Diffusion method

Abstract

Medicinal plants has always been a subject of interest for human being from ancient times due to health benefits. Researchers found that, people in different regions of the world used the same or similar plants for health benefits. Medicinal plant research includes many fields like drug discovery, ethnobotany, traditional and indigenous medicines. During corona pandemic we realised that there are no effective therapies available for new and remerging infectious diseases. Public health badly affected due to drug resistant microorganism and appearance of new disease causing microbes. Due to increasing side effects of synthetic drugs and uncontrolled infectious diseases researchers have taken interest in natural sources of medicines and have screened a large number of plants for new bioactive compounds. Natural products have been a well-known source of various molecules in the process of drug discovery and many bioactive natural product derivatives. Stereo chemical and structural properties of natural products are characteristics which are responsible for exploring novel molecular diversity. One of the successful strategies for the investigation of new medicinal agents from plants includes screening of plant extract, fractions followed by the purification of the constituents. Several plants and their products have been evaluated for their antimicrobial and antioxidant activity. In present study, the ethanolic extract of the heartwood of Tectona grandis Linn. was screened for antibacterial activity.