Fresh leaves harvested from wild S. candicans plants were washed in
running tap water and shade dried at roomtemperature for 7 days. The
dried leaves were powdered using a blunder. Callus from4week old leaf
explant cultures was harvested,washed thoroughlywith distilledwater
and oven dried at 50 °C for 2 days. Dried callus was powdered using a
mortar and pestle. The aqueous extracts of dried in vivo leaf and
in vitro callus were prepared by boiling the dried powder (500 g of
leaf and 200 g of callus powder) in distilled water (1:4 w/v) at 100 °C
for 1 h, and filtered and this process was repeated 2 to 3 times with
the same sample. The filtrates were freeze-fried (Christ, model Alpha
2–4 lyophilizer, The Netherlands) and stored at 4 °C until further use.