Variability in the Chemical Composition of a New Aromatic Plant Artemisia balchanorum in Southern Russia

Lavr A Kryukov,Rina Kamenetsky-Goldstein,Gennadii V Khodakov,Einat Shemesh-Mayer

doi:10.3390/plants11010006

Abstract

Lemon wormwood Artemisia balchanorum was recently introduced to southern Russia as a new aromatic plant. Based on biological and chemical characteristics, several populations with dominant citral, linalool, and geraniol production were selected for further development and maintained by seed propagation. Chemical analysis of five outstanding populations at three stages of annual development: vegetative, flower buds, and full flowering, confirmed that the seed populations retain the distinct dynamics of the dominant and minor components during the annual cycle and can be used for the commercial production of citral, linalool, and geraniol. Micropropagation in vitro allows for efficient clonal micropropagation and mass reproduction of elite cultivars and promising forms of A. balchanorum on a commercial scale but cannot serve as a source of direct and efficient production of secondary metabolites.

Highlights

Plants of the genus Artemisia L. (Asteraceae) have long been used in folk medicine and cuisine in many countries around the world
We identified and compared the chemical profiles of the selected seed populations of A. balchanorum at three stages of their annual development, from the vegetative stage in spring to full flowering in November
The values of the mass fractions of the essential oils in terms of raw and dry weight for all plants studied during the spring shoot regrowth (Table 1) indicate that the most productive cultivars regarding the amount of essential oils are 136 and 150, with values of 1.43% (3.88%) and 1.64% (4.54%), respectively

Summary

Introduction

Plants of the genus Artemisia L. (Asteraceae) have long been used in folk medicine and cuisine in many countries around the world. (Asteraceae) have long been used in folk medicine and cuisine in many countries around the world They contain biologically active substances that serve as the basis for the development of new drugs, some of which are already in use clinically [1,2]. Similar to other aromatic plants, the most important chemical compounds of Artemisia for commercial production and for use in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries are essential oils [6]. In many aromatic and medicinal plants, the best essential oils are accumulated at the stages of flower buds and full flowering [15,16]. Metabolite profiling of the chemical composition and oil content at different developmental stages is critical for the optimization of the harvest period for the desirable products

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Results

Conclusion