This paper deals with the comparison of genotoxicity produced by the hydro alcoholic extract of Curcuma aromatica salisb and Curcuma zedoaria (christm) rosecoe with curcumin by Ames test, comet assay and Micronucleus test. Curcuma aromatica and Curcuma Zedoaria belongs to the family Zingiberaceae. In the presence of metabolic activation factor (S9), the revertant colonies were found to be more in the case of TA98 and TA 100 strains. When compared to positive control the numbers of revertant

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... nies were found to be more or less equivalent to negative control which confirmed the absence of genotoxic effect of test compounds. In the comet assay, among the three tested compounds, curcumin was found to be more genotoxic in nature when compared by Curcuma aromatica, Curcuma zedoaria. The damage of the cells was found to be more in the presence of metabolic activation factor than the absence of metabolic activation factor. This confirmed that the phytoconstituents are not genotoxic in nature but their metabolites that are formed in the presence of metabolic activation factor is mainly responsible for their genotoxic effect. In the Micronucleus test, when compared to the positive control (Methyl methane sulfonate at the concentration of 50 µg/ml), all the test compounds such as hydro alcoholic extract of Curcuma aromatica, Curcuma zedoaria, and Curcumin at the concentration of 50μg/ml showed less toxicity to HEp-2 cells. These results might either due to the presence of low concentration of curcumin in the extracts or due to the presence of other phytoconsituents that are present in the extract.