DOI: 10.36347/sjavs.2023.v10i01.002

Pages: 5-11

Indigenous vegetables in Nigeria are under-exploited and under-utilized because of low information and awareness of specific nutrients and phytochemicals in some indigenous vegetables in which Nigeria is richly endowed with. This research analysed the level of awareness of pharmaceutical companies to phenol from indigenous vegetable and the preference, attitude and perception of pharmaceutical companies towards the use of phenol from indigenous vegetables. Data were collected with the aid of a well-structured questionnaire from 25 Pharmaceutical locally producing companies in Lagos State using purposive sampling technique. Descriptive statistics and conjoint analysis were used to analyze the data. The result of the descriptive statistics showed that 44% of the respondents were very aware that phenol is present in indigenous vegetable and 24% were moderately aware of the presence, extraction and use of phenol from vegetable to make drugs. The result also showed that 32% perceived the price of phenol from vegetable to be expensive, 40% perceived the quality to be fair, 40% felt effectiveness was moderate, 64% and 44% perceived the quantity to be small and cheaper respectively compared to the other sources of phenol. However, in terms of their attitude to phenol from indigenous vegetable, 88% of the respondents do not use phenol from indigenous vegetables and 12% of them make use of phenol from indigenous vegetable. The conjoint analysis showed that the best combination of attributes most preferred was cheap price (0.733), good quality (1.227), high effectiveness (0.173) and large quantity (-0.029). It was recommended that further research work should be carried on how improve quantity and quality of phenol from indigenous vegetable.