Abstract

COMPARATIVE STUDY ON ANTI-BACTERIAL ACTIVITY OF BROMELAIN FROM THE PULP AND PEEL EXTRACTIONS OF ANANAS COMOSUS LINN

Lekha Prabakaran*, Devi Palanisamy, Vijayabaskaran Manickam, Anjali Ann Abraham and Vijayalakshmi K.

ABSTRACT

Pineapple (Ananas comosus) has exceptional juiciness and a vibrant tropical flavor and known for its multi curative capability of various illnesses caused in human beings. Bromelain extract is a major proteinase mixture of protein-digesting (proteolytic) enzymes present in the entire plant. Bromelain binds to bacterial cell membrane causing impairment and inducing bacterial cell death. The present work was focused on the comparative study of anti-bacterial activity of bromelain present in pulp and peel extract against selected Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria. The antibacterial activity was carried out by agar well diffusion technique against the bacterial pathogens such as Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhi, Bacillus subtilis and Staphylococcus aureus and it was observed that the extract has been testified to be extraordinarily effective in counteracting to both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacterial strains, in which both the extracts show higher efficacy against Gram negative bacteria such as E. coli and B. subtilis than the Gram- positive bacteria such as S. typhi and S. aureus using the zone of inhibition comparison to that of standard ciprofloxacin. And also it could be concluded that by the comparison study of pulp and peel extract of Ananas comosus Linn., it was found that pulp extract possess more efficacy against Gram negative bacteria than the peel extract with that of standard ciprofloxacin.

Keywords: Bromelain, Gram positive bacteria, Gram negative bacteria, antibacterial activity and ciprofloxacin.