Comparative Analysis of Ocimum basilicum and Ocimum sanctum: Extraction Techniques and Urease and alpha-Amylase inhibition

In the present work, two important medicinal plants of genus Ocimum, O. basilicum and O.sanctum have been compared in a number of phytochemical parameters. Effect of extraction techniques, solvent extraction, Soxhlet extraction and hydro-distillation, on the yield in different solvents have been investigated. Hydro-distillation gave a better yield of more volatile components than hexane fraction of the other two techniques. Both the plants showed good urease inhibitory activity. Hydro-distillate was stronger inhibitor than hexane or methanolic extracts of solvent or Soxhlet extractions. The extracts of O. basilicum showed a greater urease activity than extracts of O. sanctum. Alpha-amylase inhibitory activity of O. basilicum was also higher than that of O. sanctum. Notably, the synergistic effect of the extracts of the two plants was much higher than their individual efficacy against alphaamylase. The activity decreased with decrease in concentration. Both the species had almost equal air pollution tolerance index (APTI) with O. basilicum (10.558) having slightly higher value than O. sanctum (9.202). Both plants contained alkaloids and phenolics. Both the plants also had almost same nutritional values.