MACRO ELEMENTAL COMPOSITION OF UVARIA CHAMAE LEAVES

MACRO ELEMENTAL COMPOSITION OF UVARIA CHAMAE LEAVES

CHAPTER ONE

• INTRODUCTION
  • BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Varia chamae is a Nigerian medicinal plant that belongs to the family of Annonaceae. It is commonly called Nkarika Ikot by Akwa Ibomites. It is also known as finger root or bush banana and it belong to the climbing large shrub or small native tree in tropical west and central Africa where it grows in wet and dry forest and coastal  shrublands. It is a scandant shrubs or small tree of about 4.5m high. It is used to treatment of fevers and has antibiotic properties.

In Ghana, server abdorminal pain is treated by root – infusion with native pepper in gin and the root with Guinea grains is used in application to the fontanelle for cerebral disease. Among the fulai people of Senegal, the root and leaves have a reputation as the “medicine of riches” and is taken for conditions of lassitude and senescence. It is also considered to be a woman’s medicine used for amenorrhea and to prevent miscarriage and in Togo a root – decoction  is given for pains of children. It is used for the treatment of jaundice in Ivory – Coast. In Sierra – Leone, the root is reputed for having purgative and febrifugal properties.

In Nigeria however , the root – back is used for time treatment of bronchitis, and gonorrhea in addition to its being used internally for catarihal inflammation of mucous membranes. In fact, the plant has produce a diverse range of bioactive molecules making them rich sources of different types of medicines (Nair et al., 2005). A large number of tune times leaves in different location around the world have been extracted and semi – purified to investigate individually their antimicrobial activity (Draughon 2004).

Although the use of the plant as a sources of medicine in treating disease is an ancient practice but in recent times, attention has been reverted back to the plant as source of therapeutic agents due to obvious reasons as reduced cost, relative lower incidence of adverse reactions compared to modern conventional pharmaceuticals, Karachi (2006).

• AIM OF THE STUDY

The aim of the study is to determine some macro elemental composition in Uvaria chamas leaves.

• SCOPE OF THE STUDY

This research project is limited to fire macro elements due to time and financial constrained the level of study.

• LIMITATION OF THE STUDY