Abstract

The use of indigenous foods dates back to the colonization of Africa. The shift from the use of indigenous foods to the use of nutritiously inferior non-indigenous cereals is a common trend in many developing countries. The adoption of global food systems has led to simplification of East African cultural practices adversely affecting peoples’ health. The current study compared the antibacterial activity and phytochemical composition of Pennisetum glaucum (indigenous) and Zea mays (non-indigenous), which established that 75% out of 100% of all the phytochemicals tested were found to be present in the pearl millet grain as compared to maize, which was found to contain only 37.7% of the different types of compounds tested. Pearl millet inhibited the growth of Serratia marcescens (14.00 ± 0.882), Salmonella typhi (14.67 ± 0.577), Proteus vulgaris (25.33 ± 0.577) and Staphylococcus epidermidis (11.67 ± 0.577). The tests further established that Zea mays (maize) inhibited the growth of only Proteus vulgaris. The positive control inhibited the growth of all the microorganisms used, while dimethyl sulphoxide (DMSO) (negative control) did not inhibit any growth of the microorganisms used in the study. The analysis of variance showed that there was significant difference in the zones of inhibition among the microorganisms. These findings may justify the value of nutritional and therapeutic traditional foods in developing economies. This paper recommends use of indigenous cereals for food. Further research needs to be done to isolate and analyze active compounds and their structural composition and determine their pharmacological significance.

Key words: Pearl millet, maize, phytochemical, antibacterial, indigenous foods