Kumkum Agarwal RanjanaVarma

Abstract

Hyptis suaveolens (L) Poit. commonly known as Vilayati tulsi,belongs to the family Lamiaceae. Production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) causes various diseases and cellular anomalies in human beings. Antioxidants inhibit generation of reactive species, or scavenge them, or raise the levels of endogenous antioxidant defenses. In this study the antioxidant activity as well as phytochemical analysis of Hyptis suaveolens L. was undertaken. Results revealed that Hyptis suaveolens (L) Poit. has potent antioxidant ability of 69.46% at 100 μg/ml concentration and IC50 value at 40.91 μg/ml concentration and a good correlation was found to exist between concentration of extract and % inhibition with r2=0.995. Phytochemical analysis revealed the presence of alkaloids, carbohydrates, reducing sugars, flavonoids, glycoside, tannin, phenolic compounds, protein, amino acids, triterpenoids and steroids as well as 0.88 mg/gm of photosynthetic pigments, 0.0004275 mg/g of ascorbic acid while 0.105 mg/g of foliar phenol content was found to be present.