A comparative study of antibacterial activities of wild and cultivated plants used in ethnoveterinary medicine

Abstract

Farmers generally collect fresh plant materials from the wild for ethnoveterinary uses. They are encouraged to harvest with caution and dry or cultivate important materials in order to protect the biodiversity. These recommendations are not validated scientifically. The microplate method for minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) determination was used to compare wild with cultivated, and fresh with dry plant materials. The MIC values obtained ranged from 1.25 to 0.01 mg/ml. MIC values ≤0.3 mg/ml were considered as cut off point between effective and none effective inhibition. The multilevel linear models (hierarchical linear models), both unadjusted and adjusted models were employed. The plant (name) was considered as level-2 or higher level, while the actual observation was level-1 or lower level. The crude estimates of the odds ratio indicated that wild is significantly 0.57 times less likely than garden to yield MIC values of more than 0.3 mg/ml (p-value = 0.005). Also, fresh are about 4.195 times more likely than dry to yield MIC scores of more than 0.3 mg/ml (p-value < 0.001). Adjusting for conditions “dry and fresh”, microbe and solvent; wild is significantly 0.52 times less likely than garden to yield MIC values of more than 0.3 mg/ml (p-value = 0.003). On the other hand, when adjusting for “wild or garden”, type of solvents and type of microbes; fresh is significantly 4.202 times more likely than dry to yield MIC values of more than 0.3 mg/ml (p-value < 0.001). These results partially support farmers claiming that wild plant materials are more potent than the grown ones. On the contrary, the results are in favour of drying plant materials.

Key words: Antibacterial, medicinal plants, wild, cultivated, fresh, dry, odd ratio.