**2.7 Anti-microbial properties**

Several major and underutilised legumes are rich source of bioactive phenolic compounds or polyhydroxylated compounds with immense anti-nutritional and therapeutic potential [46]. These phenolic compounds also play significant role in the stimulation of immune response, protect cells from oxidative damage and other pathogenic diseases [64]. Several studies have documented that some phenolic compounds isolated from seeds of legume crops are indispensably involved in the treatment of cancer disease, microbial/pathogenic attack, inflammatory disease thus providing potential health benefits [46]. Phenolic compounds are large group of compounds comprising phenolic acids, flavonoids, tannins and stilbenes [64]. Several recent studies have well documented the anti-microbial activity of phenolic compounds obtained from Faba bean, broad bean, adzuki bean and Dolichos bean in their crude methanolic extract of leaf and seeds [65]. The total antioxidant activity (TAA) of methanolic extract of various phenolic compounds and tannins obtained from adzuki bean and lectins have been shown to exhibit anti-microbial activity against several bacterial strains showing average zone of inhibition of 8–20 mm [66]. In addition, these methanolic extract have also shown potential anti-fungal activity against *Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Candida albicans* and *Aspergillus niger* [65]. Plethora of research have well documented that phenolic compounds are actively involved in the termination of ROS signalling as well as metal sequestration thus strengthening anti-microbial activity against various pathogenic micro-organisms [66].

In addition to phenolic compounds, several bioactive peptides have also been instigated to play important role in regulating various biological activities along with antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory effects [57]. Studies have well reported that several of the ACE-inhibitory peptides containing Arg-Lys residues at C-terminus have shown enhanced anti-microbial activities against pathogenic microorganism [44]. Similarly, peptide containing Leu-Leu-His-His residues also have been shown to posses anti-microbial and anti-oxidative properties. Moreover, a group of researchers working on legume bioactive proteins attempted to used bioactive peptides in conjunction with phenolic compounds and ascertain that the amalgamation of both stimulate the defence mechanisms of plants against pathogenic attack [44]. Similarly, a protein dolichin extracted from hyacinth bean exhibited strong anti-microbial activity against *Fusarium oxysporum, Rhizoctonia solani and Coprinus comatus* [10]. Likewise, a 36 KDa AAIs from hyacinth bean showed significantly inhibited conidial germination and hyphal growth of *A. flavus* [10]. In addition, several studies have well documented to inhibit the progression of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) by regulating the expression of reverse transcriptase and alpha/beta glucosidase enzyme as well as it also demonstrated to have low ribonuclease and translational inhibitory activities [44].
