Brine shrimp toxicity of various polarities leaves and fruits crude fractions of Ziziphus jujuba native to Oman and their antimicrobial potency

The objective of this project is to evaluate the cytotoxic and antimicrobial activities of different polarities of crude fractions of locally grown Z. jujube by applying brine shrimp lethality and agar gel diffusion bioassay. The cytotoxic result reveals that all prepared crude fractions from the leaves and fruits were lethal to all shrimp larvae at a concentration of 1000 μg/ml. Among the leaves crude fractions, butanol extract showed the highest cytotoxic activity with LC50 value of 8.69 μg/ml, whereas the lowest activity was in chloroform crude extract with LC50 value of 45.12 μg/ml. The methanol and its corresponding fractions were displayed moderate antimicrobial activity against one Gram positive bacteria Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and three Gram negative bacteria Escherichia coli (E. coli), Proteus spp (Proteus spp) and Haemophilus influenzae (H. influenzae) at different concentrations with a zone of inhibition range of 0-17 mm.229