Assessment of Chemical Composition and the Antimicrobial and Antioxidant Activities of Bassia eriophora growing in Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia

Medicinal plants are promising source of new therapeutic pharmaceutical agents because of their higher potency and wide diversity in chemical structure as compared to synthetic compounds. The plant characterized chemically by the presence of various bioactive secondary metabolites such as flavonoids, saponins, triterpenoids/steroids, tannins and carbohydrates at different levels in different fractions of plant organs and the absence of cardiac glycosides and alkaloids. The main goals of these investigations were to evaluate the antibacterial and antioxidive effectiveness of different plant organs extracts of Bassia eriophora. The antioxidant activity was investigated in accordance to DPPH radical scavenging protocol, using trolox as standard. In addition, the all amounts of phenolic and flavonoid compounds were estimated using Folin-Ciocalteu reagent. Antibacterial assessment was carried out through disk diffusion assay against S. aureus (gram-positive) and E. coli (gram-negative) pathogens. The results showed that the extracts of ethyl acetate, butanol and aqueous exhibited a higher antioxidant activity and antioxidant activities as well as higher amounts of phenolics and flavonoids among all the tested different organs extracts. These results reveal that the ethyl acetate, butanol and aqueous extracts of different plant organs of Bassia eriophora could be developed as a potential natural antioxidant and antibacterial herbal remedy.