Abstract

The holy Tulsi, also known as the “queen of herbs” is the most sacred of all the herbs found in India. This sacred plant was found in almost every Indian household. The proximate, minerals and preliminary phytochemical analysis of Ocimum sanctum leaves were studied. The nutritional analysis of Ocimum sanctum shown high level of ascorbic acid and total carbohydrate i.e., 65.41 mg/100g and 39.58% in their leaves, Whereas the total phenol was found to be maximum (1.88 mg/g) in leaves. Leaves in present investigation, contains major nutrient like N (3.30 %), P (1.10%), K (6.62 %), S (1.55 %) and Na (0.74%). Dry weight basis contains 20.64% total protein and 3.60% total fat. The oil of leaves also contains comparable amount of antioxidant as ascorbic acid, flavonoid and total phenol as well as linolenic acid, polyunsaturated fatty acid which was very good for health. According to our results, most of the identified compounds were biologically important. Further the Oscimum sanctum leaf possesses certain characteristics that can be ascribed to cultivation on a domestic plantation. Antimicrobial activity of Tulsi leaves extract was evaluated and the results shown that E. coli, E. faecalis were mostly susceptible to methanol extract than S. aureus and A. hydrophila. It can be suggested that S. aureus was the most resistant organisms to the concentrations of 20 and 40 mg/ml of the methanol extract of Ocimum. The results of this study indicated the possibility of using the leave extract of Tulsi (Ocimum sanctum) as a source of antibacterial compounds for treatment of infections caused by multi-drug resistant bacterial pathogens.