Chemical Composition of the Essential Oil of the New Cultivars of Lavandula angustifolia Mill. Bred in Ukraine

Abstract

Lavender, otherwise known as Lavandula angustifolia Mill., is widely used in landscaping, and its oil is a valuable raw material used in many industries. Therefore, new varieties of this plant are bred. The essential oil composition obtained from fresh flowers of thirteen new Ukrainian cultivars of L. angustifolia were analysed by GC-MS, and eighty-two components were identified. Linalool and linalyl acetate were principal constituents of all of the samples, and ranged from 11.4% to 46.7% and 7.4% to 44.2%, respectively. None of the studied samples fulfilled the requirements of Ph. Eur. and ISO 3515:2002. The main reason was a high content of α-terpineol (0.5-4.5%) and/or terpinene-4-ol (1.2-18.7%). Our results are in line with multiple researchers showing that the studied lavender oils do not comply with the industry standards despite their authenticity. We also investigated the effect of the growth year on the chemical composition of five tested cultivars grown on the same plots and noticed a considerable variability between years. The obtained experimental data did not show a significant inter-year trend for the content changes of the major components. Our results allow us to deeply characterize the new cultivars and evaluate their oil for a possible use in the industry, or to designate them for future selective breeding.

Keywords: GC-MS; Lavandula angustifolia; cultivar; essential oil; growth year; lavender.

Figure 1

Structures of the characteristic components of essential oils of L. angustifolia.

Figure 2

Exemplary chromatogram (GC-MS, TIC) of lavender essential oil. The sample analysed below was obtained from cultivar 2 grown in 2018. The numbers are related to the numeration used in Table 1 and Table 2.

Figure 3

Relative abundance of the main components in the studied lavender essential oils. The box section represents the interquartile range (the results between quartile Q1 and Q3). A straight line intersecting the box represents the median, and a cross represents the average value. Whiskers represent the lowest and highest results, and separate points represent outlying values.

Figure 4

Inter-year (2018 vs. 2017) changes of relative % abundancies of the main oil components cropped from the different studied lavender cultivars. The left plot highlights changes for oil components and the right plot highlights changes for cultivars.

Figure 5

Illustrative photos for the specimens of different studied lavender cultivars: (A) 2-15 (1); (B) Victoria (2); (C) 1-4-09 (3); (D) Lidia (4); (E) 1-3-16 (5); (F) 1-4-09 (6); (G) Alba (7); (H) 2-1-17 (8); (I) 2-2-3 (9); (J) 2-4-6 (10); (K) 701-2 (11); (L) 21-19 (12); (M) Rosea (13).