PHYTOCHEMICALS FOR HEALTHY LIVING: EXTRACTION AND USAGE

- Plants are the chief source of active ingredients or chemicals which are used in pharmaceutical industry. Pharmacological activity of plants makes them useful for curing bacterial, fungal contagions and also chronic-progressive diseases like diabetes and cancer etc. The synthetic molecules prepared in the laboratories, when used as medicine for treating for different diseases produce several side effects and continuous usage of those medicines is not recommended. The search for new plant based molecules for the pharmaceutical and agrochemical manufacturing companies are continuous process that necessitates continual optimization. In this article, we present the process of extraction of phytochemicals, isolation and identification of organic compounds. Antioxidant and anticancer properties of some of the plants are also discussed.