Chemical diversity of the volatiles of Lippia rotundifolia Cham. (Verbenaceae) in Minas Gerais, Brazil

• Main Authors: MESSULAN R. MEIRA, ERNANE R. MARTINS, FRANCINE S.A. DA FONSECA
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Academia Brasileira de Ciências 2019-03-01
• Series: Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências
• Subjects: chemical variability; medicinal plant; rosemary; static headspace
• Online Access: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0001-37652019000100618&lng=en&tlng=en

Lippia rotundifolia is an aromatic species, native and endemic to rocky fields, which are isolated by small mountains. It is little known about their chemical composition. Because of that we aimed to study the chemical diversity of volatiles released from rosemary leaves (Lippia rotundifolia Cham.) coming from 11 populations of the Minas Gerais, Brazil. The material for chemical analysis was obtained from the accessions in the active germplasm bank of the Instituto de Ciências agrárias of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. A total of 67 compounds were detected by HS-CG-MS. Most volatiles were detected in the São Gonçalo do Rio das Pedras accession, with 40 compounds, whereas in the Santana do Riacho accession only 5 compounds were detected. Volatiles myrcene, linalool and caryophyllene were detected in the majority of the accessions. We concluded that Lippia rotundifolia presents high chemical variability. The volatiles mircene, linalool and caryophyllene are the most frequent, detected in most of the accessions. Due to some accession to present predominance of monoterpenes, others sesquiterpenes, studies of molecular analysis are necessary for associate the chemotypes, since environmental variation influence the gene expression of the secondary metabolites.