Chemical Composition of the Essential Oil from Leaves and Flowering Aerial Parts of Psammogeton canescens (DC.) Vake from Iran

Background: the genus psammogeton edyew. which belong to the umbelliferae family, is foundin central areas of asia. this genus consists of six species widespread in the sandy dunes ofdeserts. among the four species present in iran, pssamogeton canescens (dc.) vatke is distributedin regions of iran central.objective: the aim of this study is to determine the chemical composition of essential oil ofpsammogeton canescens.methods: the essential oil was extracted by hydrodistillation of dried aerial part of plant andanalysed by gc and gc/ms.results: thirty constituents representing 99.7% of total oil have been identified. the mainconstituents of the oil were found to be β-bisabolene (33.35%), apiole (28.34 %), α-pinene(11.86%) and dill apiole (8.17%). other representative compounds were identified as β-pinene(2.68%), myrcene (2.62%) and sylvestrene (2.42%).conclusion: amounting to 99.7% of the total oil, the sesquiterpene hydrocarbons andoxygenated sesquiterpene had the highest contribution (78.16%), these fractions dominated by β-bisabolene (33.35%), followed by apiole (28.34%) and dill apiole (8.17%). the diterpene wasvery poor; it represented (0.49%), it is found to contain only a few percent of cembrene (0.49).