Comparative Analysis of Intra-and Inter Populational Heterogeneity of the Essential Oils in White Savory Plants

White savory(Satureja mutica Fisch & C.A.Mey.) is one of the most widely used medicinal plants in food processing, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry due to the strongly scented and presence of phenolic compounds such as carvacrol and thymol. This experiment was carried out to evaluate the levels of inter and intra-populations variability of essential oil compositions of S. mutica grown in north of Iran. The essential oil was extracted by hydro-distillation method and analyzed using GC-FID and GC-MS apparatus. The results showed a high level of variation among individual plants of the studied populations based upon their essential oil production. The essential oil content ranged from 0.5 to 4.2%. thymol (6.5-74.6%), carvacrol (0.9-70.4%), borneol (0.1-38.0%), p-cymene (0.30-14.2%), and γ-terpinene (0.1-9.9%) were recognized as the major components of the all tested individual plants. Therefore, the variability identified here, might be considered as characterizing the large gene pool for breeding programs to comply the requirements of pharmaceutical and food industries.