Abstract
Phytochemical processing is an area of engineering that is critical to the growing multi million dollar global business of healthcare in pharmaceutical, neutraceutical, and herbal based industries. The herbal related market includes herbs used as food or food additives, cosmetic ingredients, and herbal medicines. In developing countries they pose a large threat to public health and contribute to the prevalence of malnutrition, anaemia, eosinophilia and pneumonia. A main stream medicine is increasing receptive to use of antimicrobials and other drugs derived from plants as traditional antibiotics. The results of phytochemical screening of methanolic extracts of Alstonia scholaris, Lawsonia inermis, Ervatamia divaricata and Asparagus racemosus revealed the presence of terpenoids, steroids, flavonoids, carbohydrates and some other phyotochemicals.
