Preliminary Phytochemical Screening of Diospyros Mespiliformis

Abstract

Ethno medical practice mostly revolves round phytochemistry. Phytochemical screening of medical plants would therefore help discover a wide range of more efficacious drugs safer and cheaper drugs. The various plant parts of Diospyros mespiliformis were collected from Basawa, Zaria. They were air dried, pulvurised and serially extracted by cold extraction procedure starting with methanol. The methanol extract was then serially extracted with n-hexane, ethyl acetate and finally saturated butanol. The result revealed the presence of tannins, saponins, alkaloids, flavonoids, glycosides etc. in various extracts of the various plant parts. The work ‘preliminary phytochemical analysis’ of the root extract of the root, leaf and bark extracts of Diospyros mespiliformis has opened up a fresh line of research into discoveries of new drugs in many classes. It will be more fortunate if the new drugs thereafter discovered have better efficacy and less toxicity than the already existing ones in the classes.