Abstract:

Abstract. The chemical composition of the hydro distilled essential oil of the air dried aerial parts of Saturejahortensis growing wild in Iran was obtained by hydro distillation and was analyzed by gas chromatography (GC) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Hydro distilled aerial parts of S.hortensis yielded 1.1% (w/w) of essential oil. 24 constituents representing 100% of total oil have been identified. The main constituents of the oil were found to thymol(44.30%), carvacrol(16.37%), gama-terpinene(15.28%)and alpha-terpinene(7.38%).Other representative compounds were identified as p-cymene (2.37%), 1, 8-cineole(1.93%), β-myrcene (1.86%), α- phellandrene (1.62%) and γ-cadinene (1.22%).

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