Essential Oil Composition and Total Flavonoid Content of Aloysia Citriodora Palau under Different Cultivation Systems

As a spice and medicinal plant, Aloysia citriodora Palau (Family, Verbenaceae) is applied in nutritional and pharmacological purposes. According to the findings, many parameters relating to growth location and cultivation conditions, may affect on the secondary metabolites of the herb and result in different percentage of concerned constituents. Accordingly, present study was performed to compare the chemical composition profiles of essential oil and total flavonoid content of Aloysia citriodora Palau leaves under three different cultivation situations. To this, three cutting batch of herb were cultivated in garden, green house and hydroponic systems. Essential oil was then extracted by hydrodistillation and analyzed using Agilent technologies model 7890A gas chromatograph connected to a mass detector. Total flavonoid content was determined using Dowd method. Major essential oil constituents for the garden sample were Geranial (16.70%), Neral (13.46%) and Limonene (12.41%) followed by Caryophyllene oxide (9.30%), alpha-Curcumene (7.90%) and 1, 8-Cineole (5.49%). Main constituents were as Geranial (26.94%), Neral (21.46%) and alpha-Curcumene (9.15%) followed by trans-Caryophyllene (5.39%) for the green house sample and as Geranial (21.57%), Neral (18.25%), alpha-Curcumene (8.23%) followed by trans-Caryophyllene (6.20%) and Limonene (6.07%) for the hydroponic system. The total flavonoid content for garden, green house and hydroponic systems were determined as 7.01, 7.70 and 4.85 mg (QE)/g dry plant leaves. Despite some differences in volatile oil components of mentioned samples, findings of current work emphasizes that these cultivation conditions do not much create a significant difference in major essential oil ingredients. However results revealed the inappropriateness of hydroponic system versus other mentioned methods.