Environmental effect on essential oil composition of Aloysia citriodora from Corrientes (Argentina).

Lemon verbena (Aloysia citriodora Palau) is indigenous to South America and was introduced into Europe. It is cultivated mainly due to the lemon-like aroma emitted from its leaves, which are utilized for the preparation of herbal tea reputed to have antispasmodic, antipyretic, sedative and digestive properties. In this work we introduce the enantiomeric distribution of sabinene and limonene by bidimensional gas chromatography (chiral GC-GC) as a genuine quantitative parameter in order to improve the knowledge so far available on A. citriodora oil. Multivariate analysis afforded information on the similarities and differences of wild and cultivated A. citriodora populations during different seasons in the same environmental conditions. The results indicated that it was possible to discard the environmental and seasonal effect on the chemical composition of A. citriodora for wild and cultivated materials belonging to the same genetic origin.