ABSTRACT
Antibiotics are generally beneficial in treating susceptible microbial infections but such beneficial effects are counter balanced by rampant irrational use. In fact, the misuse of antibiotics leads to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. On the other hand, the consumption of foods contaminated with some pathogenic microorganisms represents a serious health risk to humans. Therefore the present study describes the comparison of antibacterial activity between two plants which are known traditionally by their biological activities and used in Iraqi folk medicine as antidiarrheal. Agar-well diffusion method tested antibacterial activities of methanolic crud extracts with different concentrations of the two plants on six types of bacteria strains which are: Lactobacillus sp., Staphylococcus aureus, Proteus sp. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, and Enterococcus sp. Two plants extract had antibacterial activity, methanolic extract of Plantago major was more active than methanolic extract of Ceratonia siliqua against the same tested bacteria. The biological activity was determined by measuring the inhibition zone in millimeters, results were expressed as means +/- standard deviation of triplicate experiments. These results suggest that extract of two plants possesses antimicrobial and properties, and therefore they can be used as a potential source of active ingredients for food, pharmaceutical industry or preservatives