Effects of meteorological conditions and plant growth stage on the accumulation of carvacrol and its precursors in Thymus pulegioides

Variation of the Chemical Composition of Thymus Vulgaris Essential Oils by Phenological Stages

“…Thymus vulgaris L. var. Donne Valley is a woody-based perennial evergreen subshrub rich in essential oil stored in glandular peltate trichomes located on both sides of the leaves, that blooms in clusters of pink and purple flowers in early summer (June and July) [9][10][11][12][13]. It belongs to the Lamiaceae family and is indigenous to the southern part of Europe and the Mediterranean area [6].…”

“…It belongs to the Lamiaceae family and is indigenous to the southern part of Europe and the Mediterranean area [6]. Both thymi herba (aerial plant parts) and thymi aetheroleum (thyme essential oil) are used in food industry as spices, pharmaceutics and medicine, cosmetics and perfumery [9,10,[14][15][16][17].…”

“…The pharmacological properties of thyme essential oil rely mostly on the phenolic monoterpenes thymol and carvacrol which are the major components found, but different chemotypes can also appear depending on the harvesting time, phenological stages, altitude, weather conditions [10,18]. These monoterpenic phenols act as natural bioactive compounds with strong antibacterial, antifungal, antitumor, anti-inflamatory, antiviral and antioxidant properties [9,13,[18][19][20][21][22].…”

“…Thymol and carvacrol are the most frequent chemotypes of thyme species indicating them as major components of thyme essential oils, having the same molecular weight (M=150 g.mol -1 ) but with a different OH group position at the phenolic ring (meta and ortho). Thymol and carvacrol are attended by two precursors: p-cymene and γ-terpinene [10,25].…”

Ukraine Morphological and Anatomical Structural Features of Shoots of Species of the Genus Thymus L., Introduced in Botanical Garden of Lviv National University Named After Ivan Franko

“…serpyllum) вміст ефірної олії повинен бути не менше 3,0 мл/кг, у національній статті Serpylli herba -не менше 1,5 мл/кг. Окрім того, науковцями з різних країн (Senatore, 1996;Mockute et al, 2001;Vaičiulytė et al, 2016;Svydenko et al, 2016) встановлено, що компонентний склад ефірних олій видів роду Thymus залежить від кліматичних умов. Так, для популяцій, що ростуть у країнах з теплим кліматом, зокрема, Середземномор'я, характерний хемотип монотерпенового фенолу -тимолу і карвакролу; другий хемотип -монотерпенових вуглеводнівр-цимену і γ-терпінену, характерний для країн з континентальним кліматом.…”