Antimicrobial Activity and Micropropagation of Some Rare and Endangered Plants of Jordan

The medicinal plants of Jordan are under threat due to several factors of habitat perturbation. Some of these factors include ruinous over-harvesting, climate change, competition and invasion. In this study, the authors employed a reliable method for micropropagation and assessment of antimicrobial activity of some important medicinal plants of Jordan. Seeds were surface sterilized and germinated on agar water media, and then shoots were cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium with the addition of 3% sucrose. In order to generate enough plant material, microshoots were transferred after fourteen days onto hormone free MS medium. Among all studied plants, it was found that the Achellia millefolium and Moring perigrina plants successfully multiplied in vitro containing different 6-benzyl amino purine (BA). For potential antimicrobial activity, the ex vitro (field leaf plants) and in vitro (plantlet) extracts were evaluated against some bacteria strains using ethanolic extracts. Both ex vitro and in vitro plants extracts showed the antimicrobial activity against the microorganism tested. The results from the study suggest that these two plants showed good antimicrobial activity against the different tested bacteria.