D. SRIN/VASAN, SANGEETHA NATHAN, T. SURESH AND P. LAKSHMANAPERUMALSAMY
Abstract
Indian medicinal plants and their products are used to control diverse diseases such as catarrh, bronchitis, pneumonia, ulcers and diarrhoea. A number of studies have been made on anti-microbial activity as well as on the identification of active compounds for several plants. But much information is not available on the anti-microbial properties of neem and tamarind leaves. Hence, an attempt was made to study the efficacy of anti-bacterial activity of crude, aqueous and alcoholic extracts of leaves of Azadirachta id/ca and Tamarindus indica against an array of twenty bacterial strains. The crude extract of tamarind showed promising results when compared with that of neem. Aqueous extract of neem showed activity against Salmonella weltevreden upto 500 mg and the tamarind aqueous extract showed activity upto 300 mg against Aeromonas hydrophila. The aqueous extracts of neem and tamarind were not more powerful when compared with the solvent extracts.