Abstract

• Pluchea indica (L.) Less is naturally grown in mangroves along the Tanintharyi Coastal Region. It is locally known as “Yay-Khayu” and has been utilised as a source of food and medicine and for making herbal tea. This research has been carried out to investigates the total phenolic and flavonoid contents, antimicrobial, antioxidant, cytotoxicity, and anti-arthritic activities collected of P.indica root collected from the Tanintharyi Coastal Region. The total phenolic and flavonoid contents of ethanol and watery extracts from P. indica root were determined by the Folin-Ciocalteu Reagent (FCR) and aluminium chloride colourimetric methods. In addition, the antimicrobial efficacy of watery, ethanol, ethyl acetate, and petroleum ether crude extracts from Pluchea indica root samples was evaluated against eight microorganisms using the agar well diffusion method. The tested microorganisms included Agrobacterium tumefaciens, Bacillus pumilus, Bacillus subtilis, Candida albicans, Escherichia coli, Micrococcus luteus, Pseudomonas fluorescens, and Staphylococcus aureus. According to the analysis, all the crude extracts from the root sample exhibit significant antimicrobial activity on most of the microorganisms. The cytotoxicity of ethanol and watery extracts from the P. indica root sample was evaluated using the Artemia salina (brine shrimp) bioassay. The obtained results showed that neither the ethanol nor the watery extract of the root sample exhibited significant toxicity to a maximum dose of 1000 µg/mL. The antioxidant potential of the ethanolic and watery extracts from the root sample was assessed using the DPPH free radical scavenging assay. The antioxidant activity of the ethanol extract was found to be higher than that of the watery extract from the root sample. Furthermore, the egg albumin denaturation method was used to evaluate the anti-arthritic properties of both ethanol and watery extracts from the root sample. It was found that the ethanol extract showed significantly higher anti-arthritic activity than the watery extract of the root sample.