Evaluation of Essential Oil Yield and Chemical Components of Selected Basil Cultivars

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe essential oils yield and the chemical compositions of essential oils of broad and narrow basil varieties were assessed for two years. The essential oil was obtained via hydrodistillation and analyzed using gas chromatography. The essential oil extraction yield varied among basil cultivars. The oil extraction yield for broad leaf basil cultivars, Large Leaf Basil and Genovese, was 1.3% and 2.1% respectively, while narrow leaf basil cultivars, Finissimo Verde a Palla and Larosa Emanuele-Sementi, had oil extraction yields of 1.5% and 1.8%, respectively. Regarding the active substances of basil oil, linalool and eugenol were dependent on the cultivar and year of cultivation. In the broad leaf basil cultivars the concentration of linalool remained constant during the two cultivation years, while eugenol content varied from the first to the second year of cultivation. In narrow leaf basil the content of linalool content fluctuated with cultivation year, while eugenol was the same in both experimental years. The broad leaf basil cultivar had on average for both cultivation years 3.8 mg g−1 linallol and 0.5 mg g−1 eugenol and the narrow leaf basil had 2.8 mg g−1 linallol and 0.7 mg g−1 eugenol.