Solvent Extraction and Phytochemical Screening of Seeds, Coats, Pods and Leaves of Moringa Plant

The potency of six different solvents in extracting phytochemicals from the seeds, coats, pods and leaves of moringa plant was investigated. The seeds, coats, pods and leaves of the plant were cut into smaller pieces, air-dried, ground into powdery sample, sieved with 40 mm mesh size and properly labelled. Each sample was individually extracted using six different solvents (methanol, ethanol, chloroform, ethyl acetate, water and acetone) at ratio 1: 10 for 72 h. Each solvent extract was screened for twelve phytochemicals (alkaloid, flavonoid, saponin, cardiac glycoside, reducing sugar, tannin, quinone, volatile oil, phenol, terpenoid, phlobatannin and steroid). It was observed that the seeds and leaves of moringa plant were richest in phytochemicals followed by moringa pods and the least was in moringa coat. In all the six solvents used, thirty-four bioactive ingredients were detected in seeds and leaves of moringa plant while twenty-eight phytochemicals were obtained in moringa pods and twenty-one bioactive ingredients were gotten from moringa coats. In all the plant samples, twenty-three bioactive ingredient were detected in ethanol extract; twenty-one were obtained in each of acetone, ethyl acetate and methanol extracts; water extract had sixteen phytochemicals and chloroform extract had fifteen bioactive ingredients. Among the solvents used for extraction for all the plant samples, ethanol ranked first while acetone, ethyl acetate and methanol ranked second, water ranked third and chloroform was the least in ranking.