Abstract:
Ethiopia is endowed with an enormous diversity of plants. However, the majority of these plants have
not been scientifically investigated, particularly their medical value. Traditional knowledge on the use
of plants as medicinal agents have been transferred from generation, as guarded secrets, through word
of mouth, and scientific studies on these herbs have not been properly compiled. They are the richest
bio-resource of drugs for traditional systems of medicine, modern medicines, food supplements,
pharmaceutical intermediates, and chemical entities for synthetic drugs. Brucea antidysentrica is used
traditionally to treat various diseases such as leprosy, wound, diarrhea, fever, eye disease, rabies, and
tumor/cancer. The present study was intended to evaluate phytochemical screening, antibacterial as
well as antioxidant activities of seed extracts of Brucea antidysenterica. The phytochemical screening
was carried out by chemical test using standard procedure and their chemical composition was
identified by GC-MS.. The highest total phenolic content, antioxidant and antibacterial activity was
observed in ethanol crude extracts. The antioxidant activity of each crude and essential oil was
determined using the DPPH assay , standard ascorbic acid shows the highest antioxidant activity,
which scavenges 83.82353% of DPPH free radicals. The highest %inhibition was obtained from oil at
80 ppm concentration, which is 68.48% as compared to with petroleum ether and CuO/B.A and. In
general, the result suggests that the seed of B.antidysentrica plant could be a potential source of
natural antioxidants that could have great importance as therapeutic agents in preventing or slowing
down the progress of aging associated oxidative stress related to degenerative diseases such as
diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular diseases caused by lack of antioxidant capacity.
Keywords: phytochemical screening, crude extract, essential oil, antioxidant, GC-MS analysis