CHEMOTAXONOMIC EVALUATION OF IRANIAN SPECIES OF
SALVIA BASED ON FATTY ACID COMPOSITIONS OF SEED OILS

Aysan Saebnazar*, Fatemeh Rahmani

Department of Biology and Biotechnology Research, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran
E-mail: Aysan.saebnazar@yahoo.com

The compositions of the essential oils of three Iranian Salvia species, growing wild in Iran were studied by GC-MS. Taxonomically; distinction between the three species is problematic. The seeds of the three taxa obtained from 6 natural populations, the fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) were subjected to isolate the essential oil and analytical assessment of the oil was carried out using gas chromatography coupled to mass spectroscopy (GC/MS). Thirty-nine components were characterized for S.verticillata with Lupeol (20%), heptacosane (11%), linolenic acid, methyl ester (10%), Betulin (9.0%), glycine (7.3%) and octanoic acid (6.9%) as the major constituents. For S. nemorosa 21 components were identified with Azafrin (22.4) Digitoxin (17.3%) hexopyranosiduronate (16.9%), Fenretinide (13.4%) and Astaxanthin (8.5%) as the major constituents. Our data identified 23 components for S.aethiopis with linolenic acid, methyl ester (61.8%), palmitic acid, methyl ester (18.3%), heptacosane (9.6%) and nonacosane (3.5%).Fatty acid composition of Salvia seed oils could be used as a chemotaxonomical marker. The obtained led to the conclusion that the salvia species complied with the standard requirements for the plant species, so that it can be used as a high quality raw materials for the production of phytopreparations [1, 2].

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