Chemical diversity of a wild population of Myrcia ovata Cambessedes and antifungal activity against Fusarium solani

• High chemical diversity was observed among Myrcia ovata plants.
• Six chemical groups were formed from the constituents of the essential oils.
• There is high correlation between bioactive compounds from M. ovata..
• The essential oil of M. ovata showed fungistatic activity.

The aim of this work was to evaluate the chemical diversity of the essential oil from leaves of a native population of Myrcia ovata Cambessedes collected in northeast Brazil, and to evaluate the antifungal potential of sampled plants against Fusarium solani. Essential oils of 37 plants were obtained by hydrodistillation and analyzed by GC/MS-FID. Twenty-nine compounds were detected and identified in the essential oil of M. ovata plants. High chemical diversity was observed among the sampled plants, which were distributed within 6 clusters through cluster analysis. Cluster I, consisting of 11 plants, was characterized by the presence of nerolic acid as the major compound (44.30–73.97%). Cluster II, consisting of 7 plants, was characterized mainly by the presence of the compounds linalool (14.97–30.97%) and nerolic acid (50.56–60.63%) as the major compounds. Cluster III, consisting of 3 plants, was characterized by the presence of geraniol (73.64–77.07%) as the major compound. Cluster IV, consisting of 3 plants, was characterized by the presence of compounds neral (18.21–28.39%) and geranial (36.96–48.48%) as the major compounds, and thus formed the citral group. Cluster V, consisting of 4 plants, was characterized by the presence of (E)-nerolidol (26.97–58.27%) as the major compound. Cluster VI, consisting of 9 plants, was characterized by the presence of linalool (0.44–25.35%), and/or isopulegol (0–27.50%), and/or nerolic acid (0–31.65%) as the major compounds. Essential oils from Clusters I, II, III, IV and VI provided the maximum mycelial growth inhibition (100%) of F. solani at all tested concentrations, after 96 h of incubation.