Four morphotypes -white, pink, deep pink and red -of Achillea millefolium L. are cultiva ted in the collection of medicinal plants at the Kaunas Botanical Garden of Vytautas Magnus University. The colour of linguiform flowers may be affected by a different phenotype or genotype of plants, therefore phytochemical investigations of four yarrow morphotypes were started. The main goal in this work was to evaluate differences in the total content of flavonoids and essential oils and to identify and quantify principal components of essential oils in various Achillea millefolium L. morphotypes. Gas chromatography was used for quantifying essential oil components in flowers and herb. Flowers contained more essential oils than did herb in all morphotypes of Achillea millefolium L. The total content of flavonoids ranged within 0.05-0.07%. The highest content of flavonoids was determined in the deep pink morphotype, and the content of essential oil was highest in the white morphotype of Achillea millefolium L. The total content of flavonoids and the essential oil composition of the white morphotype of Achillea millefolium L. were determined at different vegetation periods.

Journal of Environmental Engineering and Landscape ManagementPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:Abstract. Medicinal herbs after their harvesting participate in heat exchange with the environmental, as does each organic and hygroscopic material. Drying helps to conserve the medicinal raw material with the maximal preservation of its quality. The present investigation deals with the influence of the surrounding air factors (temperature and relative humidity) on drying intensity. The study object was aboveground part of hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis L.), i.e. Hyssopi herba was used as medicinal raw material. The aim of the study was to offer a mathematical model of time-related medicinal herbs moisture dynamics and to show its qualitative agreement with the physical model of diffusion as well as to determine the optimum ventilation intensity of medicinal herbs. Drying of Hyssopi herba using active ventilation was investigated. Ventilation intensity and the parameters of the drying agent influenced the processes of moisture dynamics, the total drying time and the quality of Hyssopi herba. The basic prerequisites of the drying process have been analysed. A mathematical model of moisture dynamics has been proposed and used to show the dependence of theoretical moisture dynamics on ventilation velocity. The obtained experimental values of moisture content dynamics during the drying of Hyssopi herba have been shown to agree with theoretical dependences.