Harvesting and processing medicinal plants for antibacterial testing

Harvesting and processing medicinal plants for antibacterial screening required a lot of care during the procedures. The present chapter aimed to discuss some key practices with medicinal plants for antibacterial testing. The main points include harvesting and processing medicinal plants for antibacterial for pharmacological studies in general, with emphasis on the preparation of herbarium specimens for plant identification, the cultivation, and collection of medicinal plants, the extraction of plants for antibacterial testing, the isolation and characterization of phytochemicals, as well as the quality control of medicinal plants for antibacterial screenings. Isolation methods applied to botanicals such as column, thin-layer, flash, gas, and high-performance liquid chromatography were also discussed as well as the spectroscopic methods of determination of the chemical structures of phytochemicals infrared, Ultraviolet-visible, nuclear magnetic resonance, and mass spectroscopy. The chapter has also drawn attention to the quality control of medicinal plants for antibacterial screenings, suggesting that botanicals should be free of pesticides, aflatoxins, or microorganisms.