Ethnomedicinal studies of upper forest area of East Godavari (A.P) India

The study area includes 11 Agency mandals of the East Godavari District,Andhra Pradesh. In the present investigation, the traditional uses of 186 plant species belonging to 135 genera of 60 families have been recorded. It is clearly evident that the local people use trees (37.09%) followed by shrubs, herbs, climbers, twiners, vines, epiphytes, grasses and lianes. Based on the effective utilization of crude drugs of plants, 20 different plant parts of 15 plant species were selected for preliminary phytochemical analysis and screening for antimicrobial activity. The analysis of phytochemicals among the 20 different plant parts of 15 potential drug yielding plants revealed 28 major groups of compounds. The antimicrobial activity of different solvent extracts was assessed by the formation or absence of inhibition zone. The crude extracts from 18 plant part extracts were found to show significant activity against at least one or more tested microorganisms. The results indicate that the alcoholic extracts possessed strong antimicrobial activity while the aqueous and chloroform extracts showed moderate activity. However, the hexane extracts showed low antimicrobial activity.