Variation in biological actvities of methanolic extract of Nepalese swertia chirayita population

Abstract

Swertia chirayitais a medicinal plant indigenous to temperate Himalaya. Itis known tocontain manybioactive compounds having pharmacological activities.An assessment ofphenolic content, flavonoid content, antioxidant property,and antimicrobialproperty ofmethanolic extracts from different populations of S. chirayitawas done in the presentwork. Furthremore, semiquantitative estimation of three marker chemicals namelyAmarogentin,SwertiamarinandMangiferinwas also done. Preliminary phytochemicalscreening showed the presence of saponin, alkaloid, phenols, flavonoids, glycoside,tannin, terpenoid and phytosterol in methanolic extracts from all populations.Evaluation of antimicrobial acitivity of methanolic extracts of different populatios of S.chirayita showed the antimicrobial activity against Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhii,Klebsiellapneumoniae, StaphylococcusaureusandEnterococcusfaecalis but no activityagainst Pseudomonas aeuregenosa.Similarly, antioxidant activity was shown by theextracts of all populations of chirayita. However the extracts from the populationscollected from Makawanpur showed the lowest IC50 value 42.07±3.39. Thin layerchromatography (TLC) showed the presence of all three marker compound in allsamples. Semiquantitative estimation of three marker compounds was done usingGelQuant.Net software. HighestAmarogentincontent (0.299 mg/gm DW) was found inwild populations from Lalitpur (Phulchowki)and lowest Amarogentincontent in wildpopulations from Jumla (0.005 mg/gm DW).The content of Swertiamarin was highest(0.15mg/gmDW) in wild populations of Lalitpur (Phulchowki)and lowest (0.017) incultivated populations from Ilam.Similarly, highest Mangiferin content (8.83 mg/gmDW) was found in wild populations from Tehrathum and the lowest content (0.23mg/gm DW)in wild samples from Lamjung. Key words:medicinal plant, Swertia chirayita, Methanolic extracts, TLC, antioxidantactivity, antimicrobial activityandmarker chemical compound.