Abstract

India is rich in its plants diversity, a number of plants have been documented for their medicinal potential, which are in use by the traditional healers, herbals folklorists and in Indian systems of medicine. Contaminated water with free-living Vibro cholerae cells are probably the main origin of epidemics, followed to a lesser extent by contaminated food, especially seafood products like oysters, crabs, and shellfish. Thirteen potent medicinal herbs were finally chosen from all the 45 medicinal plants collected from Thiruvannamalai mountain hills, for the preparation of decoctions. Studies were done to determine the effectiveness of herbal decoctions in killing V. cholerae inoculated onto raw Chicoreus ramosus meat. Preliminary studies were done to screen aqueous decoctions of herbs commonly used to soften meat for their ability to inhibit the growth of V. cholerae before doing immersion treatments of inoculated C. ramosus. All the extracts showed varying degrees of antimicrobial activity on the microorganisms tested. Some of these medicinal herbs were more effective than traditional antibiotics to combat the pathogenic microorganism studied. The effect of herbal decoctions on the bacterial populations of V. cholerae in C. ramosus meat may be attributed to the higher degree of antimicrobial activity exhibited by these herbal decoctions.

Key words: Herbal decoctions, Vibrio cholerae, Chicoreus ramosus, medicinal plants, sea foods.