Extraction and phytochemical evaluation of Amla for antimicrobial activity and anti-diabetic activity in mice

Herbs are plants grown for culinary, medicinal, or in some cases even spiritual value. The green, leafy part of the plant is typically used. General usage differs between culinary herbs and medicinal herbs. A medicinal herb may be a shrub or other woody plant, where as a culinary herb is a non-woody plant. By contrast, spices are the seed, berries, bark, root, fruit, or other parts of the plant, even leaves in some cases; although any of these, as well as any edible fruits or vegetables, may be considered “herbs” in medicinal or spiritual use. Culinary herbs are distinguished from vegetables in that they are used in small amounts and provide flavour (or spices) rather than substance to food. Ayurveda is the oldest surviving complete medical system in the world. Derived from its ancient Sanskrit roots – ‘ayus’ (life) and ‘ved’ (knowledge) – and offering a rich, comprehensive outlook to a healthy life, its origins go back nearly 5000 years. To when it was expounded and practiced by the same spiritual rishis, who laid the foundations of the Vedic civilisation in India, by organising the fundamentals of life into proper systems. The main source of knowledge in this field therefore remain the Vedas, the divine books of knowledge they propounded, and more specifically the fourth of the series, namely Atharvaveda that dates back to around 1000 BC of the few other treatises on Ayurveda that have survived from around the same time, the most famous are CharakaSamhita and the Sushruta Samhita which concentrate on internal medicine and surgery respectively. From this study we can assess that though the plant powder was procured from the authentic source but still for the confirmation we have done the organoleptic study under Pharmacognostic characteristics of Drug. The powdered drug was subjected to extraction protocol soxhalation. The extract so obtained was tested for the presence of phytochemicals like alkaloid, carbohydrate, amino acid, Glycosides, Phenolic compounds and Tannins that shows positive results for the extract. The antimicrobial activity of the powder extract was done with Chloroform, Petroleum ether and Methanol. The result indicates that the antimicrobial activity of the methanolic extract of amla shows the maximum activity. This shows the amla has an antimicrobial activity and this may be due to the extracted phytochemicals in methanolic extract. The amla shows positive results for tannins in the methanolic extract and even alkaloids may be responsible for the maximum antimicrobial activity. But further chemical characterization is needed to confirm the molecule responsible for the activity. The antimicrobial activity of this herbal formulation was even comparable with standard antibiotics like penicillin G and Oflaxacin