Características produtivas e químicas de duas espécies de plantas bioativas: Cymbopogom martinii e Ocimum gratissimum, com óleo essencial rico em geraniol.

Geraniol is the main component of the essential oil of palmarosa (Cymbopogom martinii), used worldwide by the perfumery, condiments, food and cosmetics industries, being the most cultivated species for its production. In 1992, a new chemotype of african alfavaca (Ocimum gratissimum) rich in geraniol was described. The objective of this work was to compare the productive and chemical characteristics of the species, emphasizing geraniol. The experiment was conducted at the Epagri Experimental Station of Itajaí-SC, in a greenhouse with automatic irrigation. A randomized complete block design was used, with 5 replicates and 3 plants per replicate, each species being a treatment. The plants were obtained by vegetative propagation. The harvest was carried out at 75 days after transplanting. The essential oil was extracted by hydrodistillation and chemical characterization determined by gas chromatography coupled to a mass spectrometry detector (GC / MS). Palmarosa presented geraniol (70.23%) and geranyl acetate (26.81%) as major components in the essential oil composition. The african alfavaca showed 86.02% of geraniol followed by other components in smaller amounts. Although the African alfavaca presented a higher concentration of geraniol in the essential oil, it was observed that the palmarosa had a higher biomass useful for the extraction. However, in the effective relationship, in the geraniol production between the two species did not present significant difference. Therefore, because it is a species not studied in Brazil, the african alfavaca quimiotipo geraniol presents an option to obtain an essential oil rich in geraniol, since palmarosa is currently the only source with similar chemical characteristics.