ASSESSMENT OF THE PHYTOCHEMICAL CONSTITUENTS AND PROXIMATE COMPOSITION OF AFRICAN PEER

ASSESSMENT OF THE PHYTOCHEMICAL CONSTITUENTS AND PROXIMATE COMPOSITION OF AFRICAN PEER: Plants are important in our everyday existence. They provide our foods, produce the oxygen we breathe, and serve as raw materials for many industrial products such as clothes, foot wears and so many others. Plants also provide raw materials for our buildings and in the manufacture of biofuels, dyes, perfumes, pesticides, adsorbents and drugs. The plant kingdom has proven to be the most useful in the treatment of diseases and they provide an important source of all the world’s pharmaceuticals. The most important of these bioactive constituents of plants are steroids, terpenoids, carotenoids, flavanoids, alkaloids, tannins and glycosides. Plants in all facet of life have served a valuable starting material for drug development (Ajibesin, 2011). Antibiotics or antimicrobial substances like saponins, glycosides, flavonoids and alkaloids etc are found to be distributed in plants, yet these compounds were not well established due to the lack of knowledge and techniques.