Dioscorea oppositifolia L.: a natural products used against the bacterial infections by tribal communities of Odisha, India



ISCA, Bhubaneswar Chapter

Accepted for poster presentation in "National Seminar on Science and Technology for Indigenous Development in India" to be held during December 09-11, 2015.

Karubakee Dhal, Sanjeet Kumar* and Padan Kumar Jena
Department of Botany, Ravenshaw University, Cuttack-753003, Odisha
 
Natural products are of paramount importances for sustainability of life in this modern era. In most of developing countries, to achieve sufficiency in supply of adequate food and medicine for rural and tribal people have been a challenge. It is more so in remote areas. There is continuous search for natural products for food and medicines from biodiversity. Biodiversity provides not only uncountable and untamed resources of food and medicines but also provide rich resources of natural products. Among them, wild tuber crops are significant. They are rich in energy supplemented metabolites and are well known as food during normal and off agricultural seasons. Many of them are also sources of natural antibacterial agents. Rural and tribal communities use them against different microbial infections. Keeping this in view, an attempt has been made to screen the secondary metabolites present in the plants parts of Dioscorea oppositifolia and to analyse the antibacterial potential of plant extracts. Results revealed that the plant parts of this wild tuber crop are rich with diverse bioactive compounds like tannin, saponin, flavonoids etc. The antibacterial activity exhibited significant inhibitory action against some selected bacterial strains (MTCC 1252- Salmonella typhi, MTCC 1457- Shigella flexneri, MTCC 1926 - Streptococcus pyogenes, MTCC 497- Streptococcus mutans and MTCC 3906- Vibrio cholerae). Present study highlights the antibacterial importances of this wild tuber crops and justifying the tribal claims as well as sound natural antibacterial agent. 

Keywords: Dioscorea oppositifolia, Natural products, Antibacterial activity 


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