Phytochemical diversity of Ziziphora clinopodioides Lam. in XinJiang, China

This investigation aimed to phytochemically characterize Ziziphora clinopodioides Lam. from 18 populations in XinJiang, China. Volatile components such as essential oils were analyzed using gas chromatography (GC) and GC-mass spectrometry, the contents of the total phenolic (TPC), flavonoid (TFC), triterpenoid (TTC), free amino acid (TFAAC) and polysaccharide (TPSC) were measured by visible spectrophotometry and the levels of caffeic acid, rosmarinic acid, diosmin, linarin, and pulegone were detected by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Next, the principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA) methods were used to analyze the genetic diversity of the Z. clinopodioides Lam. germplasm resources from XinJiang province according to the major chemical composition. According to the research, 6 principle components were extracted from the essential oils using PCA and the cumulative contribution rate reached 85.196%. According to CA, both the oils and 10 specific compositions of 18 samples could be classified into 3 clusters and the classification results were broadly consistent with the regions. The results of this research will provide a reliable basis for resource distributions and quality evaluations of Z. clinopodioides Lam.