Chemical composition and antioxidant activity of essential oils and methanol extracts of needles of Pinus mugo native to R. Macedonia were investigated. Plant material was collected on Karadzica Mountain during two seasons. Essential oil was obtained by steam distillation and was analyzed by GC/FID/MS. 8 major constituents were identified:  3 -carene, -pinene, limonene+-phellandrene, germacrene D, transcaryophyllene, -cadinene, bicyclogermacrene and -cadinol. Identification of flavonoids and phenolic compounds in methanol extracts was made by LC-DAD/ESI-MS n . 14 compounds were identified (2 phenolic acids, 2 procyanidins, 7 flavonol glycosides and 3 flavonol acylated glycosides). Total phenolic content (TPC) and total flavonoid content (TFC) were measured by Folin-Ciocalteau and aluminum chloride assay, respectively. TPC and TFC values ranged from 11.41-12.17 mgGAE/g and from 4.65-6.03 mgCE/g for dried plant material, respectively. Evaluation of antioxidant activity was made using DPPH and TBARS test. IC50 values for the methanol extract ranged from 11.58-16.01 mg/mL for DPPH and from 9.41-15.76 mg/mL for TBARS assay. IC50 values for the essential oil ranged from 2.51-4.26 mg/mL and 2.59-4.14 mg/mL for DPPH and TBARS assay, respectively. The needles from Macedonian P. mugo could be considered as a potential plant source for isolation of essential oil as well as flavonoids and other phenolics as they exhibit promising antioxidant activity. Additionally, further investigation and evaluation of chemical composition as well as biological activity should be done in order to provide more data for their possible medicinal, pharmaceutical and commercial utilization.

Cannabis is gaining increasing attention due to the high pharmacological potential and updated legislation authorizing multiple uses. The development of time- and cost-efficient analytical methods is of crucial importance for phytocannabinoid profiling. This review aims to capture the versatility of analytical methods for phytocannabinoid profiling of cannabis and cannabis-based products in the past four decades (1980–2021). The thorough overview of more than 220 scientific papers reporting different analytical techniques for phytocannabinoid profiling points out their respective advantages and drawbacks in terms of their complexity, duration, selectivity, sensitivity and robustness for their specific application, along with the most widely used sample preparation strategies. In particular, chromatographic and spectroscopic methods, are presented and discussed. Acquired knowledge of phytocannabinoid profile became extremely relevant and further enhanced chemotaxonomic classification, cultivation set-ups examination, association of medical and adverse health effects with potency and/or interplay of certain phytocannabinoids and other active constituents, quality control (QC), and stability studies, as well as development and harmonization of global quality standards. Further improvement in phytocannabinoid profiling should be focused on untargeted analysis using orthogonal analytical methods, which, joined with cheminformatics approaches for compound identification and MSLs, would lead to the identification of a multitude of new phytocannabinoids.

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.

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Essential oils from seven populations of Dalmatian sage from the North of Albania were extracted and analyzed according European Pharmacopeia 7.0. The yield differed from 1.95 to 2.75% v/w. The GC-FID-MS analysis of the sage oil revealed 42 constituents. Camphor (20.50-29.74%), followed by α-thujone (19.87-24.29%), 1,8-cineole (6.88-12.64%) and β-thujone (4.00-9.14%) were predominant constituents in all analyzed populations, representing 55.70-68.00% of the total components. All of the analyzed sage populations from northern Albania comply with ISO 6571/2008 standard and European Pharmacopeia 7.0. for Dalmatian sage essential oil content, while only four populations met the requirements of the ISO 9909/1997 standard for Dalmatian sage essential oil’s composition.