Essential oil content of Hungarian wild chamomile(Chamomilla recutita L.) and its composition duringprimary processing - survey of practice

摘要

The aim of the investigations was to follow the practical steps of post-harvest proces-sing of the chamomile raw material, and to unfold their influencing effects on its quali-ty Samples were taken during primary processing of chamomile originating from wildcollection. The essential oil content and its main compounds of five populations wereexamined during the post-harvest practice which, among the circumstances of the stu-dy, can be separated into the following possible modifying effects on the final product:pre-drying, drying and cleaning procedures. Purity of the samples during the primaryprocessing influenced the essential oil content. On the other hand no modifying effectwas detected in the case of pre-drying (spreading out for one-two days on the sun be-fore drying) or during the two different drying methods (belt dryer or tray dryer). Accor-ding to the obtained data the essential oil content of the final product depends on thegenetic potential of the basic material among the tested circumstances. Considering theessential oil compositions the ratio of the main components of the different populationschanged slightly during the primary processing, however, this change was not relatedto the steps of drying. Further research is necessary to reveal the different reactions ofdifferent chemotypes to drying. It can be concluded that the traditional drying practicesof the two companies working with primary processing of chamomile equally give a highquality material: none of the considered processing steps seem to cause significant da-mage in the quality of the product during the primary process of chamomile.