Abstract:
The medicinal plants are widely used by the traditional medical practitioners for curing various diseases in their day to day practice. Canthium coromandelicum (Rubiaceae) is one of
traditional medicinal plants in Sri Lanka which can be used for treatment of various ailments.
Different parts of plants (ie. leaves, bark, stem, fruits, root and even whole plant) have shown
to have various pharmacological activities like antimicrobial activity, antioxidant activity, antidiabetic activity, antibacterial activity etc. In the research, crude extracts were obtained from
sequential extraction using Hexane, Chloroform and Methanol respectively. Chloroform extracts were fractionated using column chromatography and sub fractions were further purified
until eight fractions with target compounds were obtained. These crude extracts were also subjected for bio activities such as lipid peroxidation, cytotoxicity (brine shrimp lethality assay)
and phytotoxicity against lettuce seed germination. None of the extracts showed brine shrimp
lethality activity with LC50 value as the extracts were non- toxic to animals at all. Highest
lethality percentage (40.00 % ) was observed for Hexane extract at 1000 ppm. Therefore plant
can be considered as a non-toxic and useful for many purposes even as a dietary intake. Extracts
of Hexane, Methanol, Chloroform of C.corornandelicum show strong inhibition activity (p ≤
0.05) with an IC50 value of 1159.0 ± 0.1 ppm, 428.5 ± 0.2 ppm 129.6 ± 0.2 ppm respectively.
Even the selected fraction from size exclusion column shows the highest inhibition activity with
an IC50 value of 109.9 ± 0.4 ppm. Presence of Alkaloid and Steroid in Hexane & Methanol
extracts were observed while the presence of Saponin in Chloroform & Methanol extracts was
being observed. Carotenoid was present in Hexane extract. Reducing Sugar was not found in
all 3 extracts. Flavonoid and phenolic compounds have widely been reported as antioxidant
agents positively correlated so that the necessity of testing of target compounds for bio screening is conspicuous. Chloroform extract can be considered as the most bio active extract with
the lowest cytotoxicity and profound lipid peroxidation activity at lower concentration.
