Essential oil variation in wild-growing populations of Salvia reuterana Boiss. collected from Iran: Using GC–MS and multivariate analysis

• Essential oils were analyzed in seven populations of Salvia reuterana by GC–MS.
• Clustering among collected population was done using HCA and PCA.
• Effect of environmental factors on essential oils variability has been studied.
• Morphological traits strongly correlated with phytochemical constitutes.
• Phytochemical distance of studied oils was determined with those reported in literature.

Variation in essential oil (EO) yield and composition, were studied among seven wild-growing populations of Salvia reuterana Boiss., collected from Iran. The EOs corresponds to the aerial flowering parts of plants varied from 0.2 to 0.36% (v/w) among populations. During GC–MS analysis, forty-eight compounds were identified. α-Gurjunene (5.43–13.7%), β-elemene (4.52–13.92%), germacrene D (2.61–7.16%), spathulenol (1.00–7.99%) and n-hexyl acetate (1.21–6.8%) were identified as major components. According to hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) and principal component analysis (PCA), EOs from population formed four groups separating from each other. In addition, canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) were used to study the influence of environmental factors and morphological traits on phytochemical constituents.

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