Study On The Phenotype Diversity And Essential Oils In Pericarps Of Wild Wintersweet

The shrub wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox Link) belongs to the Calycanthaceae family, and the plant is native to China. In this paper, the phenotype diversity and volatile oil in pericarps of wild wintersweet were studied. The main results are as follows:1. Wild wintersweets have abundant phenotypic diversities in Wanyuan city. The traits such as the length, width, length-width ratio, leaf area, number of leaf vein and dry leaves weight of mature leaves were significant different (P<0.01) in 31 randomly selected materials. And, the traits like the length, breadth, thickness and volume of mature seeds were significant different (P<0.01) in 24 randomly selected materials.2. Correlation analysis showed that significant positive or negative correlations between the traits like the length, width, length-width ratio, leaf area, the number of leaf vein of mature leaves, and the length, breadth, thickness,volume of mature seeds etc. of tested wild wintersweets, were observed at 0.05 or 0.01 level. These results established the foundation for selecting wintersweet materials according to trait correlation.3. The chemical compositions of oil produced from pericarps of C. praecox by hydrodistillation were, separarated and identified by GC-MS. The main components were caryophyllene oxide, t-Cadinol,γ-Cadinene, eudesma-4(14),11-diene,12-Oxabicyclo [9.1.0] dodeca-3,7-diene,1,5,5,8-tetramethyl-, [1R-(1R*,3E,7E,11R*)]-, Borneol, viridiflorol, aristolone, Borneol acetate, Camphene, c-Cadinene. It is firstly indicated there is essential oil in pericarps of C. praecox. This develop a more material source for aroma industry. And, the result lay the foundations for the further study of metabolic machinery of secondary metabolites in wintersweet.4. Many factors like extraction technology, the genotype, plant physiology stage affected the essential oil yields of wintersweet pericaps. The volatile oil yield reached maximum when the extract time was for 7 hours and solid-liquid ratio for 1:12.5. The study implied that essential oil yeild of pericaps from mature dry fruits is higher than from the immature. The results from different genotypes, origins and varieties showed that oil yield of wintersweet pericaps was mainly associated with genotype and without environment, while the chemical composition of essential oil is determined by both genotype and environment. So, It is probably to breed excellent wintersweet varieties by exploring genetic resources with high volatile oil contents from wild wintersweets.5. The essential oil has many physiological activite components, in which the main components were relatively similar in different genotypes. The maximum compound of the essential oil, caryophyllene oxide has antitumor activities, antispasmodic and antimalarial effects, and is able to resist some stubborn bacterials like staphyloccocus aureus. And, T-Cadinol, the prepondenrant component of the essential oil, has many healing properties like relaxing smooth muscle, treating diarrhea, inhibiting duodenal juices accumulation caused by cholera toxin in mouse, having calcium antagonistic effect and bactericidal effectt, and other bioactivities like killing mite worm.