Phytochemical Characterisation of Hibiscus Extracts and Evaluation of its Anti-Microbial Property on Bacterial isolates obtained from spoiled Food.

Abstract

Microorganisms are available naturally in the surrounding environment and therefore they can easily reach food during harvesting, slaughtering, processing and packaging (Hatab et al., 2016). These microorganisms survive under adverse conditions used in the food preservation such as low temperatures, modified atmosphere packaging, etc. (Side et al., 2017).

This research aims to evaluate the antimicrobial potential of ethanolic and aqueous extract of hibiscus sabdariffa on some bacterial isolates obtained from the spoiled food and qualitative analysis of the phytochemicals present in the both ethanolic and aqueous extract of hibiscus sabdariffa.

Dried flowers of hibiscus were ground in a grinder into a powder form of about 100g and dissolved in ethanol and distilled water respectively and mixture left for 3days to maximize extraction of the phytochemicals

Qualitative analysis of the phytochemicals were carried out and the screened phytochemicals attributed to the antimicrobial activities of the extract due to presence of the various secondary metabolites hence this plant can be used to discover bioactive natural products that may serve as leads in development of new pharmaceutical products Disk diffusion method has been used to determine the antimicrobial activities of hibiscus sabdariffa extract against bacterial isolates obtained from spoiled food. Qualitative analysis of the phytochemicals showed the presence of saponin, steroid, glycosides and carbohydrates in aqueous extract while in ethanolic extract it showed presence of alkaloids, flavonoids, saponin, glycosides, steroid, phenols, and carbohydrates.

Both extracts exhibited antibacterial activities against the tested bacterial isolates with ethanolic extracts showing significant activities against all bacterial isolates compared to the aqueous extract. Bacterial isolate 2 appeared to be the most sensitive isolate to both ethanolic and aqueous extract. Gentamycin was used as a positive control and distilled water used as a negative control which showed no antimicrobial activities against the bacterial isolates