ESTIMATION OF THE PHYTOCHEMICAL CONSTITUENTS AND BIOLOGICAL ACTIVITY OF IRAQI OCIMUM SANCTUM L.EXTRACTS

Abstract

This research focuses the phytochemical study of aqueous extracts (cold and hot) and ethanolic extract (70%) of Ocimum Sanctum L. that are collected from local markets in Iraq. The investigation of phytochemical constituents involved the qualitative and quantitative studies. The results for qualitative analysis explained that the aqueous hot extract and ethanolic extract contains more amounts of active components such as flavonoids, saponins, tannins, alkaloids, terpenoids, glycosides and amino acids or primary and secondary amines rather than cold extract, also the quantitative analysis illustrated that the aqueous hot and ethanolic extracts contains more  amounts of flavonoids, saponins, tannins and alkaloids because  the aqueous hot and ethanolic extracts still have high yield from all active components  and this results may be due to the role of heating  in the hot extract and the type of solvent in the ethanolic extract of these active components that cannot be extracted by cold water. Biological activity was also analyzed for the aqueous and ethanolic extracts of Ocimum Sanctum L. by using four different bacterial strains (Staphylococcus aures, Streptococcus pyogenes, Salmonella typhi and  Klebsiella)and using agar diffusion method. The results showed that ethanolic extract has the biggest zone of inhibition for Staphylococcus aures, Streptococcus pyogenes and Klebsiella while the aqueous cold and hot extracts given less results of inhibition zone.