The antifungal, cytotoxic, antitermite and insecticidal activities of Zizyphus jujube.

Plants are very useful, self-generating machines, producing a variety of useful bioactive products. Keeping in view this idea, the crude methanolic extract and various fractions of Zizyphus jujuba were screened for antifungal, cytotoxic, antitermite and insecticidal activities. Low activity was shown by the crude methanolic extract (12%), n-hexane (9%), chloroform (20%) and ethyl acetate (14%) fraction against Penicillium notatum. Low activity was shown by the n-hexane fraction against Aspergillus niger (10%) and Trichoderma harzianum (13%) and inactive against Aspergillus flavus, Fusarium oxysporum and Rhizopus stolonifer. The CHCl(3) fraction exhibited low activity of 10% against F. oxysporum while showing no activity against the rest of the test fungi. All the test samples were inactive against Rhizopus stolonifer. The crude methanolic extract was highly cytotoxic (73.33%) at the concentration of 1000 (µg/ml) while the rest of the test samples were low in toxicity at the same concentration. The crude methanolic extract of Zizyphus jujuba showed significant antitermite activity against Heterotermes indicola, among the test samples. Against Tribolium castaneum, Rhizopertha dominica and Callosbruchus analis the insecticidal activity was determined. All the test samples except n-hexane showed low activity (20%) against T. castaneum. The n-hexane fraction showed low activity (20%) against R. dominica while the rest of the fractions were inactive against it. Low activity of 40% and 20% was shown by the chloroform and n-hexane fraction respectively against C. analis. The results of the present study revealed that the plant could be as potent source of cytotoxic drugs.