In vitro antibacterial property assessment of silver nanoparticles synthesized by Falcaria vulgaris aqueous extract against MDR bacteria

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were fabricated in the presence of Falcaria vulgaris aqueous extract as a biosynthesis method without utilizing any surfactant or template. AgNPs were prepared under different synthesis conditions such as silver ion concentration and the amount of plant used for the extraction, reaction duration and temperature for the extraction. The effect of these variables on the size of resulted AgNPs was examined, and operation conditions were optimized statistically with analysis of variance (ANOVA) to describe the role of these variables in tuning the size of AgNPs. The results of ANOVA displayed the optimum conditions for the synthesis procedure that resulted in AgNPs with the average size of 28 ± 8 nm. Furthermore, the growth of AgNPs was monitored by UV-Vis spectroscopy, and they were characterized using TEM, SEM, X-ray diffraction, and FT-IR spectroscopy. Finally, in vitro antibacterial activity of the AgNPs showed the maximum inhibition zone alongside Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 25923) and lowermost inhibition zone touching E. coli (MDR). The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) for the AgNP-Fv was in a range between 0.535 and 0.001 µg/ml. According to the results, the ATCC bacteria were more sensitive to AgNP-Fv compared to multiple-drug resistance bacteria, except for Pseudomonas aeruginosa (MDR). Figure not available: see fulltext.. © 2019, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature