Antimicrobial, Antioxidant, Cytotoxicity Activities and Phytochemical Screening of Fruits of Abelmoschus esculentus (Malvaceae) Grown in Kassala Town-Sudan

Abstract

Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus L.) is the only vegetable crop of significance in the Malvaceae family and is very popular. Its original home is Sudan, Ethiopia and North-eastern African countries. A. esculentus fruits were brought from Kassala town in Sudan, it has been extracted with methanol. Then the A. esculentus was fractionated by using different solvents (Petroleum ether, Chloroform, ethyl acetate, n-butanol and aqueous). For both extracts and fractions of A.esculentus, the antimicrobial activity studied by using disc diffusion and minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) assays against four standard strains bacteria, two Gram-positive (Bacillus subtilis and Staphylococcus aureus), two Gram-negative bacterial strains (Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa) and two fungal strains (Apergillusniger and Candida albicans). Most of the extracts and fractions showed variable degree of activity against all microorganisms tested and all of them showed antioxidant activity when screened using DPPH method. The phytochemical screening and cytotoxicity via MTT-assay of A. esculentus fruits fractions were investigated, the cytotoxicity showed that A. esculentus was non-toxic. The aqueous fraction showed the highest values more than other fractions in all studied. These A. esculentus (Okra) is an important medicinal plant, its medicinal usage has been revealed that in the traditional systems of medicine such as Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani.