ORIGINAL ARTICLE Capparis decidua Edgew (Forssk.): A comprehensive review of its traditional uses, phytochemistry, pharmacology and nutrapharmaceutical potential Sonaina Nazar a , Muhammad A. Hussain b, * , Ameer Khan a , Gulzar Muhammad c , Muhammad Nawaz Tahir d, * a Department of Botany, University of Sargodha, Sargodha 40100, Pakistan b Department of Chemistry, University of Sargodha, Sargodha 40100, Pakistan c Department of Chemistry, GC University Lahore, 54000, Pakistan d Chemistry Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia Received 6 November 2017; accepted 17 February 2018 KEYWORDS Capparis decidua; Medicinal applications; Biofuels; Bioactivities; Phytochemistry Abstract Capparis decidua, a medicinal plant of family Capparaceae grows abundantly in wild arid regions of Asia, Africa and Saudi Arabia. The plant has found wide folk medicinal applications along with its nutritional value. C. decidua possessed many pharmacological attributes such as antidiabetic, anthelmintic, antibacterial, antifungal, analgesic, anti-nociceptive, antirheumatic, hypolipidemic, antiatherosclerotic, anti-tumor, antigiardial, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, hep- atoprotective, and anticonvulsant activities. These marvellous bioactivities of the caper plant can be attributed to the presence of a wide range of phytochemicals including alkaloids (capparisinine, capparisine, stachydrine, isocodonocarpine), phenolics, flavonoids, sterols and fatty acids. This review focuses on detailed phytochemistry, folk medicinal uses and pharmacological attributes of this multipurpose plant. Moreover, we also covered the importance of plant as a source of functional food and nutrapharmaceuticals. Ó 2018 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). 1. Introduction Plants are considered as a treasure house of potential drugs (Yadav and Agarwala, 2011; Muhammad et al., 2016; Fabricant and Farnsworth, 2001) and play vital role in the repression of dietary and pathogen related afflictions of ethnic people since ancient times (Shah et al., 2013; Shad et al., 2014; Ashraf et al., 2016). There has been a revival of interest * Corresponding authors. E-mail address: majaz172@yahoo.com (M.A. Hussain). Peer review under responsibility of King Saud University. Production and hosting by Elsevier Arabian Journal of Chemistry (2018) xxx, xxx–xxx King Saud University Arabian Journal of Chemistry www.ksu.edu.sa www.sciencedirect.com https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arabjc.2018.02.007 1878-5352 Ó 2018 Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Please cite this article in press as: Nazar, S. et al., Capparis decidua Edgew (Forssk.): A comprehensive review of its traditional uses, phytochemistry, pharmacology and nutrapharmaceutical potentialCapparis decidua Edgew (Forssk.): A comprehensive review –>. Arabian Journal of Chemistry (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j. arabjc.2018.02.007