Abstract:
There is a growing demand for medical textiles globally, which has created a great need for antimicrobial textile finish. The antimicrobial finish is given to fabrics to protect them from microbial damage and also to provide protection to the wearer. The current study is conducted to develop an eco-friendly antimicrobial finish with Saraca asoca (Ashoka tree) bark. Two different union fabrics Bamboo/ Linen and Bamboo/ Cotton were woven and pretreated with citric acid as crosslinking agent and the bark extract was applied. The antimicrobial efficacy against gram positive (Bacillus subtills), gram negative (E. coli) bacteria and a fungus (Aspergillus niger) were tested. The durability of the finish was tested by conducting washing tests and subjecting to antimicrobial tests. The results showed that, 10% methanol extract of Ashoka exhibited good antimicrobial efficacy and resistance to washing up to 10 washes. The FTIR characterization and quantitative Phytochemical Analysis showed the presence of antioxidants, flavonoids, saponins, phenols and tannins, which may be the causative of antimicrobial activity of the bark. Though well diffusion test of extracts yielded very good ZOI, the treatment fabrics didn’t exhibit good ZOI with disc diffusion, hence the parallel streak method was used. The current study contributes to the present knowledge of natural antimicrobial agents and the textile finish developed can be applied on medical textiles, surgical gowns and health care uniforms.