The Combinatorial Of M.oleifera And J. Curcas On Bacteria And Fungi

CHAPTER FIVE
5.1    DISCUSSION
The result of this investigation revealed that the leaf extracts of Moringa oleifera and Jatropha curcas possesses appreciable antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. The extracts inhibited the growth of E.coli and S.sureus of various concentrations. The minimum inhibitory concentration of both leaf extracts on the test organisms ranged between 0.250mg.ml and 0.125.g/ml. Jabovska et al. (2003) reported that antimicrobials of plant origin are not usually associated with any side effects and have enormous therapeutic potentials to heal many infectious diseases. The results obtained showed that these secondary metabolites in the plant extracts are responsible for the inhibition of the test bacterial.
The effect of the different concentration of both plant extracts on the bacterial isolates with respect to the zone of inhibition gave a linearization response for both organisms. In general the extract showed a concentration dependent inhibition effect on the bacterial isolates. This finding correlates with the report of Ekpendu et al., 1994, Ogbede et al., 1997 and Aiyelagbe et al., 2001 who independently found that various plants inhibited the growth of some clinical bacterial isolates.
Jatropha curcas leaves extract have the potential to be natural fungicide against fungal pathogens and Moringa oleifera leaves extract have the same potential to be natural bactericide against bacterial pathogens. Since this study was done under laboratory condition, further studies need to be done to determine if similar results could be obtained in vivo.