Chemical Composition of the Essential Oil From the Aerial Parts of Artemisia Herba

The aerial parts of the plant artemisia herba were collected in the May 2007 from Babaaman (North Khorassan Province of Iran). The plant was isolated by hydro distillation. A total of 61 constituents, representing more than 98% of the oil were identified by gas chromatograph/mass spectrometry (GC/MS). The main compounds, were alpha-pinene (3.28%), champhene (4.8%), sabinen (5.18%), beta-myrcene (3.04), cis,beta-terpineol (11.31%), camphor (6.11%), 8-hydroxylinalool (2.64%), L-4-terpineol ( 2.5%), alphatherpineol (2.33%), myrtenol (3.27%), bornyl acetate (6.2%), alpha-terpinol acetate (3.06%), germacrene (2.06%), davanone (8.49%), trans-farnesol (4.27%), cis-fernesol (2.07%) and 1,3,dicyclopentyl cyclopentane (2.29%). This herbal medicine traditionally uses as antiinfectious, anti-bacterial, emmenagogue, parasiticide, digestive and stomachic and gastric tonic in Iran.


Introduction
Artemisia is fairly large genuses within the family of the Asteraceae (compositeate) with 200 individual species are usually found in dry areas [1][2][3][4] .They are invariably found as small fragment shrubs or herbs and most yield essential oils.Some of these oils have found uses in perfumery and medicine [5][6][7] .Artemisia species are reported to possess anti-diabetic effect and have been used in many countries of middle east and Iran as a herbal medicine for treatment of diabetes, high blood pressure, anti-migraine, anti-fungal activity, digestive, anti-helminic, useful as tonic, antihelninic, azulene source, mycolytic, stomachic, anti-bacterial, lipolytic, anti-septic, good source of chamazulene, vermifuge, and mucolytic [8][9][10][11][12][13] .Because of application of Artemisia in traditional medicine, many species of this genus have been surveyed by phytochemists and pharmacologists [14][15][16][17][18] .On the other hand, many species in compositeate family have been found that have effective ingredients in medicinal projects [19][20][21] .One of the important species is Artemisia herba (A.herba).In our present work, the chemical compositions of A. herba are identified by using aerial part of the dried plant.Artemisia herba were collected from Babaaman Mountain, North Khorassan Province of Iran in May 2007.After one week drying the plant in shadow place, the dried plant was used for our experiments.

Experimental
Aerial parts of wild growing A. herba were collected in May 2007 from Bojnourd (Northern Khorassan Province of Iran).It was air dried in a shadow place.The dried plant was powdered and the essential of it was isolated by hydrodistillation for 4h.The oil was dried over anhydrous sodium sulfate and stored at 4 0 C.

Essential Oil Analysis
The essential oil was analyzed by GC/MS.The GC/MS analysis was carried out on a Shimadzu GC/MS model QP 5000.The capillary column was BD-5(30x0.2mm,film thickness 0.32 µm).The operating conditions were as follows; carrier gas, helium with a flow rate of 1.7 mL /min; column temperature, injector and detector temperatures, was both at 280 0 C; volume injected 0.1 µL of the essential oil and ionization potential 70ev.The initial temperature of column was 60 0 C (held 2 min) and then heated to 200 0 C with a 3 0 C/min rate and then heated to 240 0 C and kept constant for 2 min.The same condition of temperature programming used for n-alkenes mixture to calculate the RI.Determination of the oil percent in the plant obtained (1.19 w/w %).Identification of components in the oil was based on the similarity Index (SI), retention index (RI).The relative percentage of the oil constituents was calculated.

Results and Discussion
A. preliminary study on the chemical compositions of essential oils of A. herba growing in North Khorassan, Iran, was conducted.The yield of oil is quiet low, only about 1.19 w/w %.The oil is yellow with odor characteristic of plant.The hydrodistillation time for 50 g of dried A. herba is 4h.Chromatogram of the analysis is shown in Fig. 1.The total ion chromatogram (TIC) retention time is about 45 min.The most compositions of the oil isolates around the first 20min of the analysis procedure and condition.The qualitative and quantitative analytical results are show in Table 1.A total of 61 components were identified by GC/MS, representing 98% of the oil.(11.31%) was determined as the first major constituent in the oil, the second was davanone (8.49%) and the third bornyl acetate (6.2%).The other major compositions were camphor (6.11%), sabinen (5.18%), champherne (4.8%), trans-farnesol (4.27%), alphapinene (3.28%), myrtenol (3.27%), alpha-terpinol acetate (3.065), beta-myrcene (3.04%), 8-hydroxylinalool (2.64%), L-4-terpineol (2.5%), alpha-therpineol (2.33%), 1,3,dicyclopentyl cyclopentane (2.29%), cis-fernesol (2.07%) and germacrene (2.06%) in the oil, respectively.Fig. 2 shows the compositions with amount more than 2% in the oil.The results show that the second major composition is davanone in the oil.As it is reported in the literature 4 , one of the main compositions in A. herba is davanone.The presence of davanone in the plant makes it as anti-infectious, antibacterial, paraticide 4 .This plant traditionally uses for the mentioned properties of it and some other effects like as gastric tonic, digestive and stomachic medicine in Iran.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.The chromatogram of A. herba essential oil.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Variation of main constituents in the essential oil of A. herba.

Table 1 .
Variation of essential oil composition of Artemisia herba, collected from North Korassan, Iran and analyzed by GC/MS.