ISSN: 2782-893X
eISSN: 2799-0664
ISSN: 2782- 893X
— Plants have been rich sources of compounds for the development of clinically useful therapeutic agents. Catharanthus roseus has a mutagenic action due to the presence of alkaloids, making it an eminent anticancer herb along with many other therapeutic effects. In response, this research intends to establish experimental basis of the claim by investigating the cytotoxic property of the rosy periwinkle leaves extract. The crude extract of rosy periwinkle of varying concentrations of 100%, 66.67%, and 33.33% was tested against the root tip cells of onion. Pure distilled water was used as control to compare the efficacy of the extract in varying concentrations, having three replicates for each treatment. Within two weeks of experimentation, germination, cell fixation, cell staining, and microscopy was done in order to gather data and proceed to evaluation. The experimental results revealed that the rosy periwinkle leaves extract has a varying effect on its dependent variables namely: frequency of cytological aberrations and frequency of chromosomal aberrations depending on its varying concentrations. Using the One-Way Analysis of Variance at 0.01 level of significance, results revealed that only in the frequency of cytological aberration parameter did the researcher observe a significant difference, with a significance level of 0.001, the rest did not. Regardless of the majority having no significant difference, the findings still imply that the extract of rosy periwinkle leaves demonstrates a cytotoxic property against the onion root tip cells. Keywords — Catharanthus roseus, Cytotoxicity, Rosy periwinkle, Onion root tip cells, Chromosomal aberrations, Cytological aberrations, Mutagenic action