Chemical characterization of essential oil from seeds of wild and cultivated carrots from Serbia

Abstract

Seeds from wild carrot (Daucus carota L. ssp. carota) have been used for medicinal purposessince ancient times. Today the oil of its seeds has been proved to possess antinociceptive,antiinflammatory, hypoglycaemic, antidiabetic, antioxidative and anticancer activity. Thecultivated carrot (Daucus carota L. ssp. sativus (Hoffm.) Arcang.) is mainly used as a rootvegetable, while its seed oil is sometimes employed as a flavouring agent in food products andin the cosmetics industry. In the light of this very different usage, the aim of our investigationwas to identify chemical compounds from essential oils of the seeds of these two subspecies of D.carota collected during 2014 in northern Serbia. It is established that wild carrot contains 1.67%of essential oil in the seeds, while cultivated carrot contains 0.55%. In the case of wild-growncarrot, gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric (GC-MS) analyses of seed essential oil showthat sabinene (40.9%) and a-pinene (30.1%), followed by β-bisabolene (6.2%), β-pinene (5.7%) andtrans-caryophyllene (5.3%) are the dominant compounds. The major constituents of essentialoil from cultivated carrot seeds are carotol (22.0%), sabinene (19.6%) and a-pinene (13.2%). Themixture of aromadendrene, β-farnesene and sesquisabinene comprises 8.2%, the content of transcaryophylleneis 5.7% while that of myrcene amounts to 4.7%. Analysis of seeds from both carrotsreveals significantly different chemical characteristics of their essential oil, the existence of whichinfluences their different usage.