The present study entails the investigation of mutagenic and genotoxic effect of surface water samples collected from 13 different sites of the Harike wetland using the histidine reversion point mutation assay in Salmonella typhimurium (TA98) strain and plasmid nicking assay using pBR322, respectively. The physicochemical characterization of water samples using different parameters was conducted for water quality monitoring. Heavy metal analysis was performed to quantify the toxic components present in water samples. It was observed that although the water samples of all the sites demonstrated mutagenic as well as genotoxic activity, the effect was quite significant with the water samples from sites containing water from river Satluj, i.e., site 1 (upstream Satluj river), site 2 (Satluj river) and site 3 (reservoir Satluj). The high level of pollution due to industrial effluents and agricultural run-off at these sites may engender the genotoxicity and mutagenicity of water samples.

The chemical diversity of antioxidants in complex matrices makes it difficult to separate and quantify them in natural form. Therefore, it is enviable to establish methods that can measure the total antioxidant capacity of extracts. In the present study, the different assays, especially most widely used: deoxyribose, reducing, chelating power, lipid peroxidation and DNA nicking assays have been used to assess the antioxidant capacity of acetone extract/fractions of Terminalia chebula. The extract was prepared by maceration method and further fractionated with ethyl acetate and water. It was observed that the radical scavenging activity of fractions was comparatively more as compared to crude extract, and ethyl acetate fraction showed maximum effect in all assays. The percent inhibition with ethyl acetate fraction of acetone extract was observed to be 79.2, 85.9, 90.1 and 88.9% in chelating power, lipid peroxidation, site specific and non-site specific deoxyribose scavenging assays, respectively at maximum concentration tested. The results of present work indicate that ethyl acetate fraction (EAF) might be the potential antioxidant for application in food products.

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