Compositional and comparative analysis of essential oils from different plant parts of two species of Ainsliaea

Ainsliaea smithii Matff., and Ainsliaea latifolia D. Don. are medicinally important aromatic plants of the Asteraceae family distributed in the foothills of the north to northeast Himalaya of India. The essential oils obtained by hydrodistillation of the aerial parts and roots of both plants, collected from the same geographical location, were analysed by GC-FID and GC-MS. A total of fifty-four compounds from A. smithii aerial parts (ASOAP), forty-three compounds from its roots (ASORP), and fifty-five compounds from A. latifolia roots (ALORP), constituting 89.5%, 91.2% and 93.3%, respectively, of the total oil composition, were identified. Germacrene D (26.9%), (E)-β-farnesene (14.5%), and δ-3-carene (23.7%) were the predominant compounds in ASOAP, ASORP, and ALORP, respectively. All the essential oils were predominantly composed of sesquiterpene hydrocarbons. This is the first report on the extraction of essential oils and their chemical characterisation from A. smithii and A. latifolia.