SETTING A STANDARD FOR THE ESSENTIAL OIL OF CHAMOMILE ORIGINATING FROM BANAT

Long lasting experience in massive cultivation of chamomile at the Institute for Medicinal Plant Research “Dr. Josif Pančić” (IMPR, Belgrade), throughout several decades, has led to improvement of several aspects of chamomile production and processing. In addition to the most commonly grown indigenous cultivar ‘Banatska’ at the experimental field located in surroundings of Pančevo (Banat), cultivation of several other cultivars originated from Central Europe was also tested. However, in large-scale cultivation of chamomile, the native cultivar, ‘Banatska’, is still dominant. Part of plant material originated from this production always was used for production of dark blue coloured essential oil, whose sale on the market was regularly successful. Lately, the European Pharmacopoeia launched, for the first time, standard for the essential oil isolated from chamomile [Chamomilla recutita L. (Rausch.)], recognising two sharply defined types of oil, the first one rich in bisabololoxides, and the second one rich in levomenol. The aim of this study was to test chamomile essential oils of different provenience. Since laboratory isolated oils differ in large extent from those industrially produced, in this study, testing was focused to industrially produced oils only. Among 10 selected oil samples, the majority were isolated from the domestic cultivar ‘Banatska’, one from ‘Bona’, one from ‘Novbona’, one was originated from wild growing chamomile from Pelagonia (supplied by Je-San Co., FYR Macedonia), and one was a commercial sample supplied by the Roth company, Germany. Along with determination of basic quality control parameters (density, refractive index, etc.), tested essential oils were analysed by elemental microanalysis (EMA), analytical gas chromatography (GC/FID), combination of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC/MS), liquid sampling mass spectrometry (LS/MS), ultraviolet and visible spectroscopy (UV/VIS), infrared spectroscopy (IR), and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (¹H NMR and ¹³C NMR). Based on results of all the analyses, a profile of the pharmacologically active constituents of the industrially distilled essential oil of the ‘Banatska’ cultivar was developed. Subsequently, we are proposing to include appropriate quality control requirements for this oil, whose major characteristics are low levomenol content (up to 5%), moderate content of the sum of levomenol, its oxides and bisabolonoxide (not less than 20%), and content of chamazulene over 5%, in actual European Pharmacopoeia and/or related ISO standards.