EVALUATING THE ANTIBACTERIAL ACTIVITY OF FLAVONOIDS EXTRACTED FROM FICUS BENGHALENSIS

Aim: Flavonoids are produced by plants in response to bacterial infection. Plants described in ayurvedic literature namely, Ficus benghalensis, Ficus glomerata possess significant amount of flavonoids as secondary metabolites. Flavonoids gained recent interest because of their broad pharmacological and antibacterial activity. An attempt was taken to extract flavonoids from F.beghalensis and the its antibacterial activity was analysed byappropriate methods. Methods: F.benghalensis was screened for phytoconstituents. The flavonoid was extracted from the plant. The Total Flavonoid content was determined by standard method.The antibacterial activity was determined by disc diffusion assay and Minimum Inhibitory Concentration methods. Results: The results ofantibacterial activity revealed that flavonid extract of the plant exhibits good activity against all the gram positive and gram negative bacteria. The result was significant because the extract showed inhibitory activity against Staphylococcus aureus possessing β-lactamase activity.Conclusion: The flavonoid extract showedinvitro antibacterial activity against almost all the tested bacteria except Staphyloccus aureus in lower concentrations.Minimal inhibitory concentration of methanolic extract of flavonoid was found to besignificantly low for all the five bacterial strains. Our findings suggest that flavonoids have excellent antibacterial activity against several pathogenic bacteria like β-lactamase positive Staphyloccus aureus and gram negative bacteria.