Withania somnifera, known as Ashwagandha, widely considered as Indian Ginseng, is a plant of repute in Indian system of traditional medicine. The present study was emphasized to investigate antimicrobial activity of hairy roots extarct of Witahnia somnifera with normal roots extract. Hairy root is a typical disease syndrome characterized by numerous, fast growing highly branched adventitious roots at the site of infection. Transgenic hairy roots were induced in W. somnifera by infecting leaf explants with two wild type strain of Agrobacterium rhizogenes ATCC 15834 and MTCC 4364 using MS media. The methanol extracts of hairy and normal roots of Withania somnifera were evaluated for the antibacterial activity and antifungal activity by agar plate disc-diffusion assay against bacterial stain S.aureus , B.subtilis, P.aeruginosa, E. Coli and fungal stain A. niger, A. fumigates, P. notatum, C. albicans . The drug extract concentration was taken 20mg/ml of methanol. The concentrations of standard drugs i.e. Erythromycin and Ketoconazole were 0.1 mg/ml, tested to find out the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). From these different extracts tested, the hairy root extracts were found to have potent antibacterial activity and antifungal activity. A synergistic increase in the antibacterial activity and antifungal activity of hairy roots was noticed when MIC was supplemented with these extracts. This study confirms the efficacy of hairy root extracts as natural antimicrobials.
