Identification of Antitumor Activity of Seed Extracts of Date Palm, Grape, Pomegranate and Olive, Using Potato Disc Bioassay Technique

This study aimed at determination of antitumor and anticancer activities of seed extracts of date palm, grape, pomegranate and olive using biological and biochemical techniques. The crude extracts of the four plant species, using hexane, methanol and ethyl acetate, were tested for antitumor activity. The indigenous strain of Agrobacterium tumefaciens SDB0012 was used to induce tumors on the potato discs in all experiments. The methanol crude extracts of all plant species were fractionated using thin layer chromatography (TLC) and the resulting fractions the different extracts were retested for antitumor activity. Fractions having antitumor activity of more than 70 % were subjected to chemical analysis using Gas chromatography- mass spectrum (GC-MS) for identification of the chemical structure of compounds. Then, the activity of the compounds of all fractions was determined using computer surveys. Methanol extracts of all samples gave the highest antitumor activity of 100 % for grape and date palm, 80 % for pomegranate and 70 % for olive; while ethyl acetate and hexane extracts gave poor results, (except the date palm ethyl acetate extract which gave antitumor activity of 100 %). The highest number of TLC- separated fractions of eleven was obtained by olive followed by pomegranates (10), and date palm and grape (9). GC-MS-analysis revealed the presence of seven different components common in all seeds with polymorphism in sixteen components among the different samples. Nevertheless, date palm exhibited the highest amount of diverse components of 15. Therefore, it was recommended to accumulate other components to date palm obtain the whole set of the 23 components.