chemical composition of the essential oil, total phenolic content and antioxidant activity of vitex pseudo-negundo seeds collected from northeastern iran

in this study, the essential oil obtained by hydrodistillation of the seeds of vitex pseudo-negundo (verbenaceae), growing wild in sabzevar, khorasan razavi province, iran, were analyzed by gc and gc/ms. the yield of total volatiles was 0.8% (w/w). thirty-seven compounds representing 92.4% of the seed oil were identified. the main components of the oil were hexadecanoic acid (8.0%), elemol (7.0%) and α-bisabolol (6.1%). the oil was rich in sesquiterpene hydrocarbons (51.2%). the total flavonoids of different extracts of the plant were found the range 56-195 mg/g, with the maximum amount being in the methanol extract. in addition, the antioxidant activities of the extracts were measured by radical scavenging activity of antioxidants against the free radical 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (dpph). the antioxidant activities of the extracts of v. pseudo-negundo seed were higher than those of the standard synthetic antioxidants, bht, ascorbic acid and gallic acid.