Abstract
Plants may be considered as renewable sources of economically important neutraceuticals. Diospyros is a large genus of trees or shrubs, belonging to family Ebenaceae. From Diospyros montana (Local name: Bangaub) a drug diospyrin (with anti-leishmanial and anti-tumor activity) has been developed. From a preliminary field study of south Tripura district it was observed that most of the Uchai community use another species of Diospyros (Diospyros malabarica) to cure dyspepsia and cough with a fidelity level of 100%. However, there is no report of systematic physico-chemical analysis and antioxidant activity of the fruit and leaf of this plant for its scientific validation on the use as folk medicine. In the present study, a systematic physico-chemical analysis and antioxidant properties of different tinctures of leaves and fruits of Diospyros malabarica were carried out. The pH, conductivity, extract volume, extract yield of 12% tincture of each plant part in water and ethanol and primary and secondary phytochemicals were determined by following the WHO’s guidelines for quality control methods for herbal materials. The primary phytochemicals like total carbohydrates and total crude proteins and the secondary phytochemicals like alkaloids, total phenol and flavonoids were found more in fruit tinctures than the leaf tincture. The antioxidant activity by ferric reducing power assay of leaves and fruits had clearly shown that both are effective. However, the fruits were more effective in mitigating reactive oxygen species than the leaves. So, the present study established the rationality of using Diospyros malabarica as the source of folk medicine. The nobility of the present work lies in linking the ethno botanical knowledge of a particular plant based folk medicine with the active neutraceuticals present in it. This knowledge further may be utilized for rational selection of a medicinal plant as natural raw material for drug discovery.
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