Natesan Geetha’s research while affiliated with Bharathiar University and other places

Psidium guajava is profusely grown in several tropical and subtropical countries for its fruit. The fruit has been used for food and medicinal purpose, and therefore it is called in the nickname as the poor man’s apple. Up-and-coming research has found that various parts of guava fruit such as peel, pulp, and seed and their bioactive phytochemicals exert anti-tumorigenic effects against various human cancers through multiple mechanisms. The majority earlier reviews of P. guajava present a broad overview of ethnopharmacological uses, phytochemical compositions, pharmacological and biological properties, and therapeutic potential in the treatment of numerous diseases. So far, critical review of the available research data on cancer prevention and therapeutic potential of different parts of guava fruit such as fruit peel, pulp, and seed has not been published to the best of our knowledge. Therefore, the intention of this review is to collect the available literature and to provide comprehensive information of the cancer preventive and therapeutic potential of various parts of guava fruit and their isolated bioactive compounds with mechanism of action. To present this review in systematic manner, a complete literature survey was made to collect and compile available research papers on varied parts of guava fruit and their isolated bioactive compounds to reveal their usage in the prevention and treatment of cancer through in vitro and in vivo studies. Different electronic bases such as PubMed, Science Direct, and Google Scholar, etc., were used to collect information. The literature survey showed that guava fruit possesses various medicinal properties which have been reported from across the globe in the form of ethnobotanical or ethnopharmacological analysis, laboratory explorations, and clinical trials. In addition, this review highlights the various patents and commercial products that use guava fruit as raw material. This review could be a good reference for researchers who are enthusiastic to undertake further research on drug development using bioactive compounds of guava fruit for prevention and treatment of cancer.

This is an Open Access Journal / article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. All rights reserved. The present work investigates the impact of zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) as seed priming agents on the germination characteristics of three Vigna species such as V. mungo, V. radiata and V. unguiculata. ZnO NPs were synthesized using green tea leaves and were characterized by UV-VIS, XRD, FTIR and SEM. After characterization, nanoparticle suspensions of different concentrations (10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 mg/L) were prepared. Overnight soaked seeds of all three Vigna species were grown in wet cotton containing different concentrations of ZnO NPs at room temperature (25±1 o C) under dark condition for 6 days. For each day, seed germination percentage, root and shoot lengths and seedling vigour index were measured. For V. mungo and V. radiata, 10 and 20 mg/L and for V. unguiculata only 10 mg/L influenced these germination characteristics. Higher concentrations of ZnO NPs (30 to 50 mg/L) showed a relative decrease in all the germination characteristics for three Vigna species. It was noted that at certain optimum concentrations of ZnO NPs, the seedling exhibited good growth over control and beyond that a decline in growth was observed. The results of this investigation indicated the potential of using ZnO NPs as seed priming agents for these species in low concentrations only. ABSTRACT RESEARCH ARTICLE