Study and comparison of morphological and phytochemical traits ofMentha pulegium L. in different habitats of Guilan province

M. pulegium is belongs to Lamiaceae. Pulegon as a main ingredient in mint has antimicrobial and aromatic properties which has been used to treatment of many diseases. In this study M. pulegium were collected from three natural habitats of Ziaber, Masal and Abkenard in the flowering stage in Guilan province. Also, rhizomes of habitat samples were cultivated in the research farm of Zanjan University in the same year. The rhizomes of the these populations were collected in the spring of 2017 and transferred to the research farm of Zanjan University. In the summer of the same year, flowering branches were harvested from natural habitates. The essential oil was extracted by using a Clevenger apparatus and water distillation and were and bused by GC and GC-MS. Results were showed that the polygon were highly varied in all populations, in which the highest and lowest content of pulegone was observed in cultivated population in Zanjan and Abkenar population with 54.43% and 40.19%, respectively. According to the results, the populations grown habitat were superior to morphological traits such as leaf length, plant height and number of internodes. A higher percentage of essential oil was observed in the cultivated population, it may be due to decrease in rainfall, an increase in altitude, as well as differences in latitude and longitude. The pulegon and camphene in Ziaber region had the highest amount with 49.17% and 11.84%, respectively, in Masal region, pulegon with 49.47% and gamaterpinen with 24.24% and in Abkenar region, pulegon (40.19%) and gamaterpinen (11.56%) were the most compounds. The high amount of these compounds in the studied populations indicates the high quality of essential oil in this medicinal plant. In this study, the cultivated populations had fewer compounds with a high percentage of the main compounds compared to other populations, so it seems they have more superiority and potential for breeding and domestication programs.