Abstract

The study of natural products has given rise to the discovery of a variety of useful drugs for effective management of several diseases . Phytochemical constituents of plants are fingered to be biologically active compounds responsible for different activities such as analgesic, anti inflammatory, antioxidant, antimicrobial, antifungal and anticancer. Thus, assessment of phytochemical constituents of plants is of utmost importance in medic ine. There is however paucity of information on the comparative assessment of leaves and seeds of Datura stramonium D. stramonium ). The refore, the present study was carried out to compare the phytochemical constituents of D. stramonium leaves and seeds. E thanol was used for the extraction using standard method. Phytochemical screening was performed using various quantitative methods. The ratio of leaves versus seeds of phytochemical quantitative analysis wa s as follows: saponins (65.25: 34.25 mg/g), alkalo ids (32.10: 71.28 mg/g), flavonoids (44.24: 30.12 mg/g), terpenoids (32.68:30.20 mg/g), tannins (31.25:26.62), respectively. This implies that saponins were dominant compounds followed by flavonoids and terpenoids in leaves while alkaloids were the dominan t phytochemical in seeds. Based on our results, it is concluded that leaf and seed extracts of D. stramonium have varying concentrations of phytochemicals with the seed having higher concentration of alkaloids justifying why the seed is more toxic than the leaves while leaf extract had highest concentration of saponins and flavonoids giving credence to the antioxidant property of the leaves . Good quantity of various phytochemicals in this plant justifies its traditional use in the treatment of various disea ses.