Chemical Composition of Essential Oil from Varthemia persica

Varthemia persica Dc. (Compositae) is an aromatic plant which is used as an anti-spasmodic and anti-emetic for some kidney conditions. In the present study, the chemical composition of the leaf and stem oils of the plant are collected from South Khorasan province (Iran). The essential oils were obtained by hydro distillation method and were analyzed using the GC and GC-MS techniques. The efficiency of extracting (w/w%) are 0.93 and 0.37 on a dry weight basis for the leaf and stem oils respectively. In the leaf oil, fourty-two compounds were identified accounting to 84.63 % of the total oil. The major compounds were, naphtha[2,3-b] oxirene, dehydrate-(22.90%), cysteinyl-acetate (21.36%), isolongifolene,7,8-dehydro-8a-hydroxy (8.73%), and unknown constituents (0.84%). The main components among the thirty constituents characterized in the stem oil representing 45.41% of the total components detected, naphtha[2,3-b] oxirene, decahydrate (10.12%), isolongifolene,7,8-dehydro-8a- hydroxy (9.66%), and bicycle [3.1.1] hept-2-en-4-ol,2,6,6-trimethyl-acetate (8.15%). It seems that the leaf oil is a sesquiterpene-rich essential oil (43.26%). In leaf essential oil, the percentage of oxygenated terpenoids is 68.20 % which is an indicative of the antibacterial properties. Compared to stem oil sample, the leaf sample’s essential oil is of the best quality.