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Coastal sand dune plants are of great importance to researchers in the field of pharmacology, medicinal, industrial, nutritional, and ecosystem restoration. Nowadays most of the pharmaceutical industries depend on the medicinal plant for their raw materials for drug discovery. Spinifex littoreus is a coastal plant under the family Poeaceae growing on the sandy seashore and is well known for its medicinal properties. The present study was carried out to the phytochemical screening and estimated the bioactive components present in the methanolic extract of Spinifex littoreus leaves. The phytochemical studies revealed the presence of flavonoids, saponins, alkaloids, terpenoids, tannins, and phenols. The GC-MS analysis revealed the presence of twenty bioactive compounds which include n-Hexadecanoic acid, 9,10-Secochola-5,7,10(19)-trien-24-al, 3-hydroxy-(3.beta.,5Z,7E), and 1,3-Benzenedicarboxylic acid, etc., The phytochemical and GC-MS profiling of the methanol extract of Spinifex littoreus leaves revealed the presence of bioactive compounds with important medicinal properties. Hence, the presence of these phytochemicals could be responsible for the therapeutic effects of the plant.

SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) complaint is a new strain of coronavirus (2019-nCoV) found in 2019 at Wuhan city, China. Till date, there is no specific treatment against Covid-19 infection. Computer-aided drug design (CADD) is one of the new approaches for identifying the lead compound in drug development. In the present study, we performed an in-silico study of the Triterpenoid compounds from Mangrove plant as potential COVID-19 main protease (Mpro) inhibitors, which are used as a potential medicine target. Mangroves are salt-tolerant plant, rich in secondary metabolites. Generally, more than 16% of triterpenes are present in the Mangrove plant and possess many Pharmacological activities. In this study we used Molecular Docking using Auto Dock software. The binding energies obtained from the docking of 6LU7 with Beta-amyrin, Betulin, germanicol, taraxerol, lupeol, lupane, simiarenol, Tirucallol, Ursolic acid, Oleanolic acid, and Alpha-amyrin were − 8.37, -8.73, -8.06, -7.71, -8.32, -8.49, -8.16, -8.99, -9.24, -8.87 and − 8.89 kcal/mol, respectively. Further, these results were also confirmed by drug-likeness properties by using Swiss ADME software. This study showed Triterpenoid compounds seemed to have the best potential to act as COVID-19 Mpro inhibitors and they have a potential lead compound for the development of drugs, which can be used against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, further research like in-vivo and in-vitro examines is necessary to investigate their potential medicinal use.