Assessment of Antimicrobial Potential of Manilkara hexandra Leaf

An increasing reliance on the use of herbal remedies in the industrialized society due to prevalence of multi-drug resistant strains has raised the development of new effective therapeutic agents from plants. This study focuses on the antimicrobial potential of Manilkara hexandra (Roxb.) Dubard leaf extracted by Soxhlet extraction method using three solvents with increasing polarity viz., petroleum ether, acetone and methanol. The microbial strains investigated included 9 Gram-positive bacteria, 14 Gram-negative bacteria, 7 yeast and 4 moulds. The antimicrobial activity was done by agar disc diffusion method at two different concentrations viz., 250 and 500 μg/disc. The antimicrobial activity was found to be concentration dependent. All the three extracts showed better activity against bacterial than fungal strains. Maximum antibacterial activity was shown by methanol extract. The results were compared with the zones of inhibition produced by commercially available standard antibiotics. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of M. hexandra was evaluated within a range of concentration from 250-32,000 μg/ml.