COMPARATIVE GC/MS ANALYSIS OF ROSE FLOWER AND DISTILLED OIL VOLATILES OF THE OIL BEARING ROSE ROSA DAMASCENA

The accelerated and successful oil bearing rose breeding requires routine application of efficient procedure for analysis of flower volatiles, with capacity to extrapolate the obtained flower data to the volatile composition of the distilled rose oil. In the current study a procedure for solvent extraction and GC/MS analysis of rose flower and rose oil volatiles from oil bearing roses including Rosa damascena is presented. The procedure allows reliable identification of 68 volatiles in the rose flowers which are also detected in the distilled rose oil. The described procedure was further applied for comparative analysis of the flower and distilled rose oil volatiles from eight different genotypes of oil bearing roses. A data set consisting of ratios of the relative abundance of given volatile in the flower spectra to the relative abundance of the same volatile in the distilled rose oil spectra was generated. ANOVA test for a data subset of 27 volatiles detected in the flowers and rose oils of all analyzed oil bearing rose genotypes showed no significant influence of the genotype on the ratio of relative abundances of flower to rose oil volatiles. The average and relative standard deviation values of the obtained ratios between relative abundances of flower and rose oil volatiles for the analyzed genotypes were calculated for each identified flower compound. The results demonstrate that the described flower solvent extraction and GC/MS analysis procedure could be reliably applied for prediction of the volatile composition of distilled rose oils from wide range of oil bearing rose genotypes based on the extrapolation of GC/MS analysis data from single or few flowers from each studied plant. The possibilities for incorporation of the described procedure into oil bearing rose breeding and genetic resources characterization are discussed.