Phytochemical screening and bioactivity studies of Momordica charantia / Nur Hazwani Razak

The phytochemical screening and biological activities of Momordica charantia have been studied. Two parts of plant were used in this study such as fruit and seed. The plant has been extracted by using three different polarity of solvents such as n- hexane, chloroform and methanol through the cool extraction method. The result has shown that the highest percentage yield was methanol fruit extract with 15.29%. The phytochemical screening has revealed there are many secondary metabolites in M. charantia fruit and seed such as alkaloid, flavonoid, saponin, phenol, tannin, terpenoid, steroid and glycoside while for seed part saponin was absence. The solvent system that has been used in Thin layer chromatography (TLC) was the mixture of n-hexane and chloroform with ratio 5:5 and 8:2, to obtain better separation by using vanillin spraying reagent. Antibacterial study has been conducted by using disc diffusion method on Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella typhimurium and Escherichia coli. In addition, the result has shown that the highest inhibition zone for fruit and seed was on Staphylococcus aureus in the range of 16 to 17 mm. Meanwhile, the antioxidant study revealed that the fruit and seed of M. charantia do not have antioxidant activity with percentage inhibition less than 50%.