Antioxidant and antimicrobial activity of Araucaria cookii and Brassaia actinophylla.

Araucaria cookii is an ornamental plant, which are evergreen conifer found in India and in many other European countries. Similarly Brassaia actinophylla is also an ornamental plant with its native from Java, Australia and in U.S. Though these plants are used for various purposes, the medicinal properties of the plants were not investigated. In our study, the two ornamental plants were chosen for screening both antioxidant and antimicrobial activity. The Leaves of the plants were used for preparing crude extract and was prepared by Soxhlet extraction method. For the extraction of the leave extracts, different solvents viz., methanol, chloroform and petroleum ether were used based on our preliminary data. The obtained extracts were condensed and stored. For the antioxidant and antimicrobial activity, the extractions were prepared into various concentrations. For the antioxidant activity DPPH was used as scavenger of the free radicals which showed the inhibition of percentage for Araucaria cookii was 63% and the inhibition percentage for Brassaia actinophylla 41%. For the antimicrobial activity the extracts were checked against two bacterial and two fungal pathogens. The phytochemical analysis assists in the study of the antioxidant and antimicrobial activity as to the probable compounds responsible for the activity. The result thus obtained provides a report of Brassaia actinophylla as a possible source of antioxidants and also the use of both extracts as a probable antimicrobial agent.