Chemical Composition of Essential Oil from Varthemia persica

Varthemia persica Dc. (Compositae) is an aromatic plant which is used as anti-spasmodic, anti-emetic and for some kidney conditions. In the present study of the chemical composition of the leaf and stem oils of the plant 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, forty-two compounds were identified that 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%), 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 their antibacterial properties. The leaf sample’s essential oil is of the best quality compared to stem oil sample.