Documentation of ethnomedicinal information and antimicrobial validation of Thespesia populnea used by Yanadi tribe of Ganugapenta village, Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh, India.

AIM: This study aimed to document the traditional knowledge of medicinal plants and antimicrobial validation of Thespesia populnea used by Yanadi tribe of Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh, India.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study was mainly focused on documentation of medicinal plants used by Yanadi tribe to treat different diseases with a standard questionnaire. These plants were cross-checked in Dr. Dukes Database and available literature to know the significance of this tribe on medicinal knowledge. Among the documented plants, T. populnea was selected for antimicrobial activity with disc diffusion assay.
RESULTS: Among the documented medicinal plants, herbs were the most utilized plants, followed by leaf part of the plants; paste form of medicinal preparation was the dominant one among the mode of preparations and oral administration was generally followed by this tribe. When checked these plants in Dr. Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Database most of the medicinal plants were matched at least one medicinal use and most of them were correlated with existing literature. In antimicrobial activity, the microbial pathogens Klebsiella pneumonia among bacteria and Rhizopus arrhizus among fungi were most susceptible to methanol extract of T. populnea.
CONCLUSION: From this study, we conclude that the preparation and dosage of the medicines by Yanadi tribe of this area is unique and the correlation of medicinal data with Duke's Database and existing literature reveals high medicinal significance of claimed data of this tribe and potential inhibitory activity of T. populnea could be studied further to isolate effective antimicrobial agents.

INTRODUCTION

Since antiquated times people utilized plants for their daily needs, they practice the plant-based medicine to cure different ailments. These concerns are now asserted by modern civilization as “Ethnobotany” [1] defines the study of interaction between plants and people. The ancient people like tribes utilized plants for food, fodder, dyes, fibers and medicinal purposes collected from forests without any destructive way, they gave up holy respect to the plants and conserved in the form sacred groves. The documentation of the above-mentioned actions except medicinal knowledge, practiced by various ethnic groups which apply the methods of ethnobotany and medical anthropology are known as ethnomedicine [2]. The earliest ethnomedicinal documentation was started in 1500’s by knowing the medicinal value of Indian fever bark (Cinchona officinalis) by European people and in India this modern ethnomedicinal investigation was started during 1935 by Kirtikar and Basu [3]. This research was continued by different modern ethnologists in different places with different tribal communities of India still today [4-9]. The World Health Organization proclaims that 80% of the world population still relies on medicinal plants to cure different types of diseases either by the traditional way of treatment or isolation of novel active compounds from medicinal plants [10]. Among the world, India has rich and diverse cultural traditions associated with the use of medicinal plants in different traditional systems of medicine including Ayurveda, Homeopathy, Siddha, and Unani [11]. Therefore, India is a botanical garden of the world and a goldmine of well recorded and traditionally well-practiced knowledge of herbal medicine [12]. The ethnic people residing in different places of India still dependent on medicinal plants to treat various ailments. The people who have a treasure house of knowledge on medicinal plants keep subtly and passed that knowledge only for their generations. The ethnomedicinal investigation helps to ecologists and wildlife managers to ensure and establish the local knowledge, which ultimately helps to pharmacists and pharmacognosists to prepare novel pharmaceutics [13].

The ethnic group “Yanadi” is native to Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh, India. Some of the researchers documented traditional knowledge of Yanadi tribe inhabited in surrounding villages of Chittoor district [14-20]. There is no proper report on medicinal knowledge of Ganugapenta village so far. Hence, the present investigation is mainly focused on medicinal knowledge of the Yanadi tribe of Ganugapenta village is situated in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh, India. This knowledge is transferred orally from generation to generation and dwindling rapidly due to the lack of interest among the younger generations. Therefore, this study is led to document the indigenous knowledge of this ethnic group. Based on the documented information the medicinal plant, Thespesia populnea is being used for many ailments by the Yanadi tribe of Ganugapenta village and was chosen to assess growth inhibitory efficacy against different bacterial and fungal pathogens.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Study Area

The selected village Ganugapenta is situated in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh, India with the geographical coordinations such as 13°30¢162 N latitude and 79°8¢492 E longitudes with an elevation of 1425 feet above the mean sea level [Figure 1]. The village gets the highest precipitation from monsoon months with an annual average rainfall of 729 mm. The studied forest area comes under dry deciduous forests of Eastern Ghats covered with timber yielding trees, thorny shrubs and herbaceous flora occupied with an area of 1125.38 hectares and possesses richest knowledge on usage of plants to treat various ailments by simple or in combination with other ingredients.

Figure 1

Mapping representation of study area

Data Collection

Frequent field visits were conducted during 2014-2016 for collection of ethnomedicinal information from Yanadi tribe inhabited in the forest areas of Ganugapenta and their surrounding villages. The 80% of data were collected from Ganugapenta village and remaining from surrounding villages like Kavetigaripalle and Yallankivaripalle situated on the north side, Madinayanapalli from west side, Sreeramapuram from the south side, finally east side of Ganugapenta having an enormous range of deciduous forest with high hill tops. Most of the medicinal plants are available on the east side of Ganugapenta which is the major source for collection of medicinal plants. The ethnic group cultivates and earns money from rice and black-eyed pea, cowpea, groundnut, black gram, green gram, red gram and also gets their wages from farm works in the surrounding villages. The tribal villages inhabited by 945 families with 4300 people; among them, 1912 of males, 1952 of females and 436 children are residing in thatched houses, thatched huts and in concrete roofed houses. Most of the ethnomedicinal data were collected from 22 traditional medicine practitioners such as Chengaiah (60Y), Chinnabba (50Y), Jayaramaiah (52Y), Nagaiah (70Y), Sankaraiah (61Y), Narasimhulu (55Y), Siddaiah (70Y), Ramaiah (70Y), Krishnaiah (56Y), Bosanna (52Y), Srinivasulu (58Y), Yerraiah (61Y), Ramakrishnaiah (52Y), Gopal (60Y), Veeraswami (60Y), Venkataswamy (54Y), Venkatesu (53Y), Muniah (64Y), Chinakka (60Y), Nagaratnamma (56Y), Kamalamma (65Y), and Parvatamma (54Y). Among the 22 practitioners 18 members are from men’s, 04 members are from women’s and their age range from 50 to 70 years. The younger generations are not interested to participate and if as they participate, we personally observed that they do not have sufficient knowledge about on medicinal plants. During the field visits, the plants were collected based on the information provided by the tribe in their own language with the help of standard questionnaire [Figure 2]. The collected medicinal plants were locally identified to know the vernacular name from medicinal practitioner and bring back to the laboratory to prepare herbarium specimens. These herbariums were cross-checked with the help of herbaria already deposited in Department of Botany, Sri Venkateswara University, local flora of Chittoor district [21] and Gamble volumes [22]. The documented ethnomedicinal data were cross-checked with Dr. Dukes Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Database [23] and with the existing literature. Voucher specimens were prepared for the collected medicinal plants and were deposited in the Herbarium wing, Department of Botany, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati.

Figure 2

Questionnaire for collecting information on medicinal plants

Antimicrobial Validation

Based on the ethnomedicinal information received from the Yanadi tribe, the medicinal plant T. populnea is enormously using in the preparations of herbal medicines to treat various diseases. Hence, the plant was selected for antimicrobial validation against different microorganisms. The leaves of T. populnea were collected from the Ganugapenta village forest area, cleaned with distilled water and shade dried and grounded with a kitchen blender. The dried 100 g of plant leaf powder was soaked in 500 ml of methanol and moderately shaken for 24 h on a shaker (Tanco HRD3 Shaker, India). The contents were filtered with Whatman No. 1 filter paper and again re-extracted with the same quantity of fresh solvent. The obtained filtrates were combined and dissipated with a rotary evaporator (Royal Scientific 137 B, India) at 38°C to separate the solvent from mixture. The remaining residue was dried to yield a granulate form of nearly 1.45% of powder (dry weight/material dry weight ×100) on lyophilization (Terroni lyophilizer, Brazil). The obtained powder was stored in airtight containers at 4°C for further studies. For antimicrobial activity, five bacterial species (Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumonia, Proteus vulgaris, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa) and five fungal pathogens (Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus niger, Curvularia lunata, Fusarium oxysporum, and Rhizopus arrhizus) were procured from the Department of Microbiology, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati. The disc diffusion assay was followed for the checking antimicrobial activity [24]. The Whatman No. 1 filter paper (6 mm) was loaded with 20 μl of various concentrations like 25, 50, 100 μg/ml of leaf extract and kept for 10-15 min for drying under sterile conditions. Nutrient agar medium for bacteria and potato dextrose agar medium for fungi were prepared and solidified under sterile conditions.

Triplicates of treated discs were placed on solidified media and were incubated at 37 ± 2°C for 24 h and the results were tabulated.

RESULTS

The study revealed that the Yanadi tribe of Ganugapenta forest area using 54 medicinal plants belonging to 35 families to treat 40 ailments. The scientific name, vernacular name, voucher specimen number, family, part used, life form, mode of preparation, administration, and actual use of medicinal plants were listed in Table 1, and the important photographs of them were given in Figure 3. Among the documented medicinal plants, the Yanadi tribe used more plants from herbs, followed by shrubs, trees, and the stragglers for their preparation of medicine [Figure 4]. Majority of the medicines prepared from leaf part of the plant followed by root, stem bark, whole plant, stem, seed, flower, fruit, rhizome, and root tuber [Figure 5]. Among the different mode of medicinal preparations, paste form of medicine preparation is widely used method for the documented plants followed by juice, powder, decoction, crushed form, fresh form, capsule, fumes, and tonic form [Figure 6]. Oral administration of medicine is a predominant method used by this tribe followed by topical application and inhalation through nostrils [Figure 7]. In this study, we observed that the Yanadi tribe admixtures camphor for the preparation of medicines with Glossocardia boswellia, gingelly oil in the case of Haldina cordifolia and Martynia annua, jaggery in the case of M. annua and Pterolobium hexapetalum, lime in the case of Cardiospermum halicacabum, milk in the case of Ocimum gratissimum and Sarcostemma acidum, pepper and salt in the case of Pavetta indica, turmeric powder in the case of Anisochilus carnosus, Capparis sepiaria, C. halicacabum, Cassia tora, Cleome viscosa, Dactyloctenium aegyptium, Jasminum angustifolium, and Sansevieria roxburghiana and hot water in the case of Curculigo orchioides, Maba neilgherrensis, Rhus mysorensis, and Sida spinosa. Utilization of these admixtures may help to elevate the actual use of medicine. The camphor enhances the relief from rheumatic pains, the utilization of gingelly oil, milk, hot water may helpful to easy intake of medicines and may act as lubricants, utilization of turmeric powder and lime may enhance the actual life of medicine and their activity. Pepper and salt may give a taste to the medicine prepared from bitter parts of the plant.

Table 1

Documentation of ethnomedicinal information from Yanadi tribe of Ganugapenta forest area

Figure 3

Important medicinal plants documented from Ganugapenta

Figure 4

Life form of medicinal plants used by Yanadi tribe of Ganugapenta forest area

Figure 5

Percentage of different plant parts used by Yanadi tribe for preparation of herbal medicines

Figure 6

Percentage preparation of different forms of medicines by Yanadi tribe of Ganugapenta forest area

Figure 7

Percentage administration of herbal medicines by Yanadi tribe of Ganugapenta forest area

The medicinal uses of the documented plants were cross-checked with Dr. Dukes Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Database. Among the 54 medicinal plants documented from the Yanadi tribe, 20 medicinal plants were matched with this database for at least one use and the remaining most of the plants were correlated with recent scientific literature. Among the documented 54 medicinal plants, the plant T. populnea was utilized mostly by Yanadi tribe of Ganugapenta forest area to cure various ailments such as cuts, skin diseases, inflammations, stomachache, dysentery, lesions on the face and wounds. Notwithstanding these, the Yanadi tribe inhabited in different parts of Andhra Pradesh like, Tirumala hills of Chittoor district prepared paste from stem with the help of goat milk to treat dandruff [25], leaf paste to treat arthritis [26], inhabitants of Kailasagirikona prepared eye drops from flowers to soothe watering of eyes [27], the leaf paste was utilized as analgesic and antiseptic medicine by Sriharikota Island inhabitants [28]. Rather than this Yanadi tribe, the other tribes like Kanni tribes of Tamil Nadu state prepared juice from fruit to treat skin diseases, fistula, inflamed joints and insect bites [29], decoction from stem bark and leaves were used to treat leprosy [30]. Irula tribe of the same state to a prepare paste from leaves to treat skin diseases [31], juice from stem bark to treat snake bite [32], crushed form of fruit to treat insect bites [33]. The Hill Korwa tribe from Chhattisgarh state prepared juice from the leaves to treat neuritis and mad dog bite [34]. Instead of this conventional or traditional knowledge, the work was undergone to exhibit distinctive biological activities of the plant like wound healing [35], memory enhancing [36], hepatoprotective [37], antidiarrheal [38], antioxidant [39], antidiabetic and antihyperlipidemic [40] activities of the plant. Based on the utilization rate by Yanadi tribe, scientific literature on ethnopharmacological data and the prior work on validation of antimicrobial activity of T. populnea are vague. Hence, the plant T. populnea was chosen and validated its antimicrobial efficacy followed by the method of disc diffusion assay against different microbial pathogens. The antimicrobial activity of T. populnea methanol extract showed highest growth inhibitory activity against E. coli among bacteria and F. oxysporum among fungi [Figure 8 and Table 2; Graph 1].

Figure 8

(a-j) Evaluation of growth inhibitory effect of Thespesia populnea leaf methanolic extract on different microorganisms

Table 2

Effect of various concentration of Thespesia populnea methanolic leaf extracts

Graph 1

Graphical representation on effect of various concentrations of Thespesia populnea methanolic different microorganisms

DISCUSSION

The documented medicinal plants were categorized by diseases wise, the plants such as Canthium dicoccum, Habenaria plantaginea, M. neilgherrensis, O. gratissimum, Polygala chinensis, S. spinosa, and Toddalia asiatica recorded as the most utilized plants for the treatment of fever followed by Andrographis serpyllifolia, Aristolochia indica, Ehretia laevis, Opilia amentacea, Phyllanthus reticulatus, and Striga angustifolia for snake bites, C. sepiaria, C. tora, Lepidagathis cristata, S. roxburghiana and T. populnea for skin diseases, Allmania nodiflora, Cleome felina, J. angustifolium and O. gratissimum for worm infections. The remaining plants were utilized for thrice, twice and even for single disease also. Whereas family wise, the Asclepiadaceae represents 5 species followed by Caesalpiniaceae, Euphorbiaceae and Rubiaceae with 3 species, Acanthaceae, Lamiaceae, Oleaceae, Tiliaceae and Verbenaceae with 2 species and the rest of the families represent only 1 species each. More species from Asclepiadaceae was used by Yanadi tribes in the Chandragiri reserve forest area. It may be due to the wide distribution of this family and known number of medicinal uses [20]. This tribe selected most of the medicinal plant materials from herbs. Comparative results were accounted from ethnobotanical studies of Japali Hanuman Theertham, a sacred grove of Tirumala hills [41]. The reason could be that the herbs are accessible plenty in the fields and higher distribution within the grasp height. This tribe preferred leaf part of the medicinal plant for their medicine preparation, the common use of leaf in the preparation of remedies could partly due to the relative ease of finding. This observation harmonizes with the ethnomedicinal data documented from Yanadi tribe and local villagers of Veyilingalakona sacred grove [1]. This tribe preferred mostly paste form of the medicine, it may be due to easy intake and rapid action while administration of the medicine. A similar result was reported in medicines prepared by tribal groups of East Godavari district [42]. The oral administration of medicine gives better results when contrasted with topical application of medicines in the case of emergency ailments like scorpion sting and snake bite. The Yanadi tribe of Ganugapenta and the majority of ethnic groups preferred oral administration of medicines, which may be due to rapid healing from an ailment. The Yanadi tribe of Kadapa district also followed similar type of treatment [43].

The documented medicinal plants were cross-checked with Dr. Dukes Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Database which is only the database available at present. 20 medicinal plants such as A. indica, C. sepiaria, C. halicacabum, C. tora, C. felina, C. viscosa, C. orchioides, D. aegyptium, Flacourtia indica, J. angustifolium, Jatropha gossypifolia, L. cristata, O. gratissimum, Phyla nodiflora, Polycarpaea corymbosa, P. chinensis, S. spinosa, T. asiatica, Tribulus Terrestris, and Ziziphus oenoplia were matched with this database at least by one medicinal use. Despite the fact that the following medicinal plants were appeared in the database but not correlate with Dukes Database. However, we have gone through the recently published literature for each and every plant documented from the Ganugapenta forest area. The medicinal plants like A. carnosus leaves have the ability to mend sores between the foot fingers [44] and the paste form of leaf applied at morning times, once in 2 days to cure ringworm [45], Aristolochia bracteata leaf was therapeutically familiar in the sake of Tvakroga for the treatment of leprosy [46], C. dicoccum was treated for fever by Irula tribes of Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, India [47], Diospyros melanoxylon pounded bark is antiseptic having the capacity to cure wounds and cuts [48], E. laevis used as an antidote for snake bites by Koya tribes resided in Warangal District of Telangana, India [49], M. annua leaf extract have the capacity to recuperate sore throat [50], P. reticulatus leaf paste given orally 2 times per day for the treatment of dysentery by Gingee hills villagers, Villupuram District of Tamil Nadu state [51] and oral administration of juice prepared from equal proportions of P. reticulatus leaves and roots from Borassus flabellifer, Tinospora cordifolia to treat snake bites by Chenchu, Yanadi and Yerukula tribals of Kadapa district, Andhra Pradesh [43], Randia dumetorum fruit paste has the ability to cure dandruff and to prevent falling of hairs [52], S. roxburghiana leaf paste was prepared with turmeric powder was utilized for the treatment of skin diseases by tribal groups of Nizamabad district, Andhra Pradesh [53] and for earache by Kani tribes of Agasthiyarmalai biosphere reserve, southern Western Ghats, India [54], Secamone emetica leaf has the capacity to cure leukorrhea [55] and headache [28], T. rhomboidea root is used for the treatment of headache, especially in East Africa [56].

The leaves of A. nodiflora given orally for the treatment of stomachache due to worm infection by Thottianaickans community resided in Tiruchirappalli district of Tamil Nadu State [57], A. serpyllifolia leaf paste was applied on affected part of the snake bite by local people of Kanjamalai Hills, Salem district of Tamil Nadu [58], Caralluma umbellata stem part given orally by the local people of Pachamalai hills of Tiruchirappalli district, Tamil Nadu for the treatment of stomachache [59] and to treat gastric ulcers by Malayali tribes native to Jawadhu hills, Thiruvannamalai district of Tamil Nadu state [60], Cereus pterogonus fresh young shoots were used to treat cardiac diseases [61], G. boswellia leaves were actually used as a green vegetable and furthermore consumes to cure rheumatic pains by tribal people of Deogarh district of Odisha state, India [62], H. plantaginea root tuber acts as an excellent remedy for fever [63], H. cordifolia stem bark have the capacity to cure jaundice honed by tribal people of Sitamata wild life sanctuary of Rajasthan, India [64], O. amentacea root was smoldered with charcoal, pounded with snake teeth and applied to treat snake bite by Kenyan tribals [65], Phyllanthus virgatus leaf was given orally for the treatment of jaundice and diabetes by Chenchu and Nakkala tribes of Japali Hanuman Theertham, Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh state [41], P. hexapetalum leaves have the capacity to cure constipation [66], R. mysorensis leaves were utilized for the treatment of hepatitis [67] and diabetes [68], S. emetica was utilized for the treatment of leukorrhea by Yanadi tribe resided in Sriharikota Island, Andhra Pradesh [28] and finally S. angustifolia pulverized form of whole plant was used to treat snake bite by Chenchu and Nakkala tribes of Japali Hanuman Theertham, Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh State [41]. However the medicinal plants like, Acacia chundra, Caralluma lasiantha, Cassia montana, Grewia carpinifolia, Heliotropium bracteatum and Premna latifolia were does not reflect any appropriate ethnomedicinal values either from Dr. Dukes Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Database or by any other recent publications. In light of this database and recently published information, we presume that the medicinal knowledge of the Yanadi tribe is highly noteworthy. Coming to the antimicrobial activity of T. populnea, it showed higher inhibitory activity on E. coli among bacteria and F. oxysporum among fungi. The E. coli is a Gram-negative bacterium was highly susceptible, whereas the B. subtilis is a Gram-positive bacteria showed less susceptibility toward the concentrations prepared from T. populnea. The fungal pathogens were less susceptible when compare to bacterial species. It might be due to the Gram-positive bacteria have thick layers of peptidoglycans when compare to Gram-negative bacteria and the fungal cell walls are made up of chitin which is more rigid than peptidoglycan [69]. This is may be the actual reason behind that the T. populnea showed maximum growth inhibitory activity against Gram-negative bacteria followed by Gram-positive and fungal pathogens.

As there is no primary health-care center located to nearby village and they are still dependent on traditional medicine system. Most of the medicinal information is possessed by the people of age group between 50 and 70 years. The younger generations are not intrigued to hone their ancestor’s knowledge. At the same time, they are attracted and flee to urban cities toward the modern medicine system. In this way, the drastic changes are appeared in way of living will definitely loose the treasure house of medicinal knowledge to the future generations. Hence, we deliberated that this is the right time to document rapidly dwindling traditional knowledge of Yandadi tribe of Ganugapenta village.

CONCLUSION

In the current scenario, the development of resistant pathogens against traditional antibiotics leads to innovation of novel and effective drugs from plant resources. The documented herbal formulations against diseases used by Yanadi tribe will pave the way to investigate efficient alternative antibiotics with high therapeutic potentials to combat the present pathogens. T. populnea shows profound inhibitory activity against different microbial pathogens. If isolates therapeutic novel compounds from the plant can be used as a new therapeutic weapon against infectious diseases. We suggested to the research beginners and pharmaceutical companies, these documented medicinal plants will definitely have different biological activities. Because the documented medicinal data of this tribe are mostly correlated with Dr. Dukes Phytochemical and Ethhnobotanical Database and the existing research documentations, the only thing is isolation of novel compounds from the plants are remanent.