CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1     Background of the Study

          Natural product preparations have historically been the major source of pharmaceutical agents. Analysis of FDA new-drugs approval from 1981 to 2002 reveals that natural that natural products continued to play a pivotal role during that time, even if the industry had towned to other discovery strategies (Newman et al 2003).

          The importance of plants cannot be over emphasized. Over a long period of time plant have been used by mankind for many different purposes such as food, shelter, and medicine. Plants have also been used by traditional healers in the treatment of various disease (Uwumarongie  et al, 2007). Africans, for a long time had learned to extract natural colors from trees and shrubs for a number of uses such as cosmetics and dying (Uwumarongie et al., 2007). Phytochemicals are non-nutritive plant chemicals that have protective or disease preventive properties. It is well known that a plant produces these chemical to protect itself but recent research demonstrated that they can protect human against disease. Photochemistry is the scientific discipline used to describe medical plant consisting on how to extract. Concentrate, analyze standardize and preserve herbal product. Plant-derived substances have recently become at great interest due to their versatile application (Akinyemi et al., 2005). Medical plants are the richest bio-resources of drugs of traditional system of medicine. Modern medicine and chemical entities for synthetic drugs (Neube et al.,2008). Investigating the chemical constituent of the plant is of great importance, not only for the discovery of the therapeutic agent, but because it can serve to discover the actual value of traditional herbal medicine (Mojab et al., 2003).

          According to the WHO, medicinal plants would be the greatest source to obtain a wide range of drugs with antimicrobial properties. Ethanobotanical surveys carried out in Nigeria and elsewhere in the world have reported a number of plants that are used in the treatment of infectious diseases, including magnifera Indica (Mustapha et al., 2013).

          Mangifera Indica is a large evergreen tree, with a heavy dome-shaped crown. It belongs to the family Anacardiaceae. It is found in the tropics where it is used as a horticultural and medical plant (Bobsaet al., 2007). Fruits contain protein, fat, carbohydrate, minerals, vitamins A,B and C and amino acids. The fruit also yield a resin that is said to contain Mangiferamagniferic acid, resinol and maniferol and others (Dweek, 2001, Wauters et al., 1995).

          The leaves contain the glucosidemangiferin. The bark of the mango trees contains 16-20% tannin (Dweek, 2001). The leaves have been reported to contain glycosides, sterols, polyphenols, tannins euxanthin acid, saponins, mangifenin, mangin and so on. The ashes obtained from the leaves are used to treat burns, scales, sores, cough and diarrhea in South America and other part of the world (Hirte, 2007).

          The leaves, bark and root are used to treat oral candidiasis, malaria, glain infection, dysentery, diarrhea, through and shingles reported in a number of ethanobotanical survey (Hirte 2007, Mustapha 2014). This study is aimed at determining the phyto constituents of Mangifera Indica roots extracts.

1.2     Aims and Objectives of the Study  

Ø To prepare crude extract of Mangifera indica roots using a solvent.

Ø To determine the chemicals present in Mangifera indica roots e.g. flavonoids, saponins, Alkanoids, tannin, cardiac glycocides etc.

1.3            Scope and Limitation of the Study

This research was limited to phytochemical screening of mango roots by time, and financial constraints.

1.4     Definition of Terms

Mango: This is a common garden tree throughout the tropics, when ripe, this delicious desert fruit is particularly high in vitamin A. the fruit is also on important sources of substances for birds, bats, insect and mammals.

Phytochemicals: This is a broad variety of compounds produced by plants and are found in fruits vegetable, beans, grains and other plant.

Roots: These are the major parts of a plant which helps the plant to stand firmly in the soil and can be used as medicinal.

Screening: This is the use of highly selective procedure to allow the detection and isolation of only those micro-organism which are not of interest from among a large microbial population.

Phytochemistry: This is the scientific discipline used to describe medicinal plant consisting on how to extract, concentrate, analyze, standardize and preserve herbal product.

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