Medicinal plants are used to treat infectious and inflammatory diseases in various traditional medical systems, and thus could represent a promising source of antimicrobials. To establish the scientific basis for the therapeutic actions of traditional plant medicines, we provide a general workflow for evaluating the anti-infective properties of crude extracts from plants. We provide guidance starting from plant collections in the field and the creation of herbarium voucher specimens, moving to the processing of plants by drying, grinding, and extracting the plant parts collected, and finally ending with the antimicrobial investigation of these plant extracts. In this protocol, we provide a description of our workflow for the growth inhibitory evaluation of plant extracts against common human pathogenic bacteria.
Keywords: Antimicrobial; Broth microdilution method; Ethnopharmacology; Extraction; Field collection; Infection; Plant; Traditional medicine.