Essential oil composition of five Basil cultivars (Ocimum basilicum) from Albania

Abstract

Basil (Ocimum basilicum L., fam. Lamiaceae) is an important medicinal and aromatic plant with very wide range of uses. This paper presents qualitative and quantitative analyses of essential oils obtained from five types of Italian basil cultivars: Napolitan, Red basil, Fino Verde, Limonez, and Genoveze culltivated in Albania and collected during the summer 2012. The hydrodistilled BEO (Basil essential oil) content ranged from 0.11% to 3.40%. Within the total of 65 identified compounds with GC/FID/MS, nine were considered as predominant (1,8-cineole, linalool, cis-thujone, methyl chavicol, eugenol, trans-(E)-caryophyllene, trans-(α)-bergamotene, germacrene D, and epi-α-cadinol) representing 49.20 to 85.43% of the components in the analysed essential oils. In all cultivars, linalool was detected as the most abundant component (36.20-46.59%). BEO’s from all five cultivars differ in their chemical composition but generally conform to EO’s from Sweet Basil grown in the Medditeranean region. The Napolitan cultivar showed the largest similarity to Sweet Basil, not only for the morphology, also due to the essential oil composition that comprises Basil’s most dominant chemical components (linalool, methyl chavicol and eucalyptol) in particular percents.