S. Nithya Priya, R. Sumathi D, Suresh Babu and N. Senthilkumar*
Pterocarpus santalinus L.f Commonly known as “Red Sanders” a highly impressive indigenous deciduous tree, renowned for its characteristic timber of exquisite colour found use in colouring pharmaceutical preparations. The bark and heartwood heal various skin diseases and used in cosmetics and traditional medicines. Hence, phytochemical screening of the bark and heartwood extracted with methanol andethanol was carried out to understand their medicinal value. Qualitative analysis of bark and heartwood of P.santalinus confirmed the presence of alkaloids, flavonoids, tannins, phenols, saponins and terpenoids. Quantitative analysis was also carried out and found that the concentration of phenols and alkaloids were more in heartwood than bark of P. santalinus. However, tannins and flavonoids were found to be more in bark than heartwood. Antioxidant activity was carried out by 2, 2-Diphenyl-1-Picryl Hydrazyl (DPPH) assay to determine the scavenging activity and showed 50 percent scavenging activity in both methanol and ethanol extracts of bark and heartwood of P.santalinus. Antimicrobial activity against human pathogens viz., Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Pseudomonas aeruginosa showed that the ethanol extracts of bark found to have antagonistic activity while the ethanol extract of heartwood observed to have synergetic activity against these tested human pathogens.
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