chemical constituents of the essential oils from the leaves, flowers and seeds of tagets minuta l. by gc/ms

tagetes is a genus of 56 species of annual and perennial mostly herbaceous plants in the sunflower family (asteraceae or compositae).in this research our goal was recognizing the main components of the plant to extract useful ones. essential oils of the leaves, seeds and flowers of tagets minuta l., growing wild in iran, were extracted by hydrodistillation and analyzed by gc and gc-ms. identification of the constituents of the oils was done by comparison of their mass spectra and retention indices with those given in the literature and the authentic samples. twenty-six components were identified in the essential oils of the investigated organs. the main components extracted from the leaf oils were dihydrotageton (45.9%), cis-β-ocimene (11.9%) and borneol (11.1%), and those of the seed oils included dihydrotagetone (21.0%) and benzoic acid-4-hydroxy-methyl ester (33.5%).also, trans-ocimenone (27.0%), cis-β-ocimene (26.0%) and cis-ocimenone (17.6%) were the major constituents in the flower oils