Contaminated food, water, & soil are the most common habitats of pathogens, causing infections. The development of new antimicrobial agents against resistant pathogens is of increasing interest as many bacteria are resistant to chemical antibiotics. The use of plants in treatment of infectious diseases is common in traditional medicine. Therefore, crude extracts of eleven plants commonly used in traditional medicine, and honey were evaluated for their antibacterial property by disc and well diffusion assays. In this study, different bacterial strains were isolated from soil and water. Although biochemical characterization of the different bacterial isolates has not been done, their identification was carried out done by gram staining. The antibacterial activity of extracts of traditionally used medicinal plants namely Curcumin longa (Turmeric), Azadirachta indica ( Neem), Ocimum sanctum (Tulsi), Allium cepa (Onion), Zingiber officinale (Ginger), Datura stramonium (Dhatura), Syzygium aromaticum (Clove), Cinnamomum zeylanicum (Cinnamon), Piper nigrum (Black pepper), Mentha spicata (Mint), Allium sativum (Garlic); and honey were tested against the different enteric bacterial strains isolated from the soil and water. The tested plant extracts and honey exhibited variable degrees of antibacterial activity. Compared with standard antibiotic amoxicillin, the extracts showed low to moderate activity against the bacteria. Our study suggests that cinnamon, garlic, neem , ginger, tulsi, black pepper, clove , turmeric and honey could be the alternatives to the conventional antibiotics to cure the bacterial infections without the associated side effects of these antibiotics.
