Abstract
The importance of medicinal plants cannot be ignored regarding the treatment of various diseases. Therefore the present work was carried out to screen the methanolic extract and it fractions of the aerial parts of Berberis lycium for different in-vitro biological activities. Results indicated that the plant possess significant and good anti-bacterial activities against S. aureus (80 %), E. coli (78 %) and P. aeruginosa (70 %). The crude methanolic extract and all the fractions of plant showed low anti-fungal activity against A. niger, A. flavus, T. harzianum and R. stolinifer while none of the test samples showed any activity against F. oxysporum and P. notatum. Similarly, low phytotoxic activities ranging from 5-25% was shown by test samples, at 1000 mu g/ml. Significant insecticidal activity was observed for n-hexane fraction against T. castaneum (80%) and good activity against R. dominica (60%). Weak haemagglutination was observed against AB(+), A(-) and B+ blood groups for crude methanolic extracts, n-hexane and CHCl3 at dilution of 1:2. CHCl3 showed significant anti-termite activity against H. indicola. Low cytotoxic effect was shown by aqueous (32.5%) and EtOAc (35%) against A. saline. Good NO free radical scavenging assay was observed for various fractions at various concentrations and was concentration dependent. These phytochemical constituents can be isolated by subjecting these fractions to bioactivity-guided isolation.