COMPARATIVE STUDY ON THE ECOLOGICAL EFFECT OF DIFFERENT DRYING METHODS ON THE PHYTOCHEMICAL CONSTITUENTS OF THE LEAVES OF TRIDAX PROCUMBENS LINN

The role of plants in medicine cannot be over-emphasized; nearly all known conventional drugs have their composition to originate from plants. This medicinal properties possessed by plants can be attributed to some chemicals which are called phytochemicals produced in some parts of the plants. The ease in access to plants which is all around us, made individuals and households to become Doctors of their own. In that the hear-say knowledge of plants has led to people choosing plants for treatment of sicknesses over conventional drugs. Locally, there are various ways individuals prepare their herbal medicine, and they include; boiling, drying under the sun and air drying etc. This study was aimed to know the extent to which some of these methods of herbal medicine preparation (sun drying and air drying) affect the phytochemical composition of some plant parts. The leaves of Tridax procumbens were used for this study, and it was evaluated for total saponin, total flavonoids and other secondary metabolites using standard procedures. The study of two different samples from the aforementioned two different methods of herbal medicine preparation reveals the presence of saponin, tannin, alkaloid, flavonoid, steroid. The air dried sample gave higher composition of saponin (1.85±0.03), flavonoids (1.34±0.03), tannin (2.51±0.02), alkaloids (1.49±0.02) and steroid (0.26±0.02), there is significant difference between the phytochemicals seen in the two samples. Thus, this reveals that the air drying method will have little effect on the phytochemical constituent of the leaves, and can be preferred over sun drying in preparation of herbal medicine.