Phytochemical Study and In Vitro Biological Assays on Zingiber officinal: A Widely Used Spice ^†

Zingiber officinal is a widely used plant in cooking as well as traditional remedy in prevention of digestive conditions and disorders, cancer, inflammatory disease, antiseptic. In recent years several studies are conducted on botanical, chemical and toxicological parts of this plant in order to prove a concordance between traditional and medicinal knowledge. In fact, plant based metabolites is an interdisciplinary field, as it requires knowledge of botanic, pharmacology, food, chemical, clinical, preclinical, herbal drug technology, microbiology etc. There is an urgent need to explore and investigate the innovations, current shortcomings, future challenges explore and convey the key concepts for understanding the assessment of plant based metabolites in therapeutically caring. Furthermore, Drug discovery from plants goes through different strategies: empirical approach like ethno botanical and pharmalogical studies, and chimiotaxonomical one like choosing certain secondary metabolites family phenols, flavones, terpens... In this case, the present work is a contribution in the evaluation of Zingiber officinal’s rhizome percolate potential in polyphenols, flavonoïdes, in vitro antioxidant test Ferric reducing antioxidant power FRAP, antibacterial activity against several gram + (S. aureus) and gram-(E. coli, P. aeruginonose, K. pneumoniae) referential strains and antifungal activity (Candida albicans, Aspergillus niger,) were tested using disk diffusion method, which reveled a very interesting dose-depending activity (from 16 to 26 mm) against S. aureus, P. aeruginonose and K. pneumoniae, similar to used standard Gentamicin GN, whereas fungi exhibit less sensitivity with 10 mm of inhibition and E. coli was resistant to crud ginger extract.