Estudo a composição química do óleo essencial da espécie vegetal Schinus Molle L. (Aroeira - saisa).

Abstract

Essential oils consist largely by hydrocarbons of low-molecular weight, which give some odoriferous herbs characteristics. These constituents mainly belong to the class of monoterpenes, sesquiterpenes, and other isoprenes. These oils have great commercial value and can be used in various segments, such as food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. They also have some biological and pharmacological activities scientifically proven.This work presents the study of chemical composition and content of volatile compounds of essential oil obtained by hydrodistillation from the leaves of Schinus molle L. species, widespread in South and Southeast regions of Brazil. Due to the climate of our city, this species is so well adapted and can be found in several locations. The identification of oil components was performed by Gas Chromatography coupled to Mass Spectrometry - GC / MS. As a result of this study, they were observed as the major compounds sabinene (18.54%), myrcene (13.52%) and β-cadinol (18.72%) for the sample OESM-1 and sabinene (32.94%) ,α-cadinol (16.98%) and limonene (9.39%) for the sample OESM-2, sabinene figured as the only major in the two samples. For the sample OESM-1 82 compounds were detected in the GC-MS experiment, of which 34 were identified and for the sample OESM-2compounds were detected, of which 23 were identified, representing 93.99% and 91.46% content of volatile oils, for samples OESM-1 and OESM-2, respectively. The results showed differences in the compositions of essential oils for both samples, because the plant material that originated samples were collected at different locations of the city, so this difference maybe originated from factors that influence the composition of these oils, such as weather, harvest time, sunlight, soil nutrients, etc.