Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Industrial Crops & Products journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/indcrop Infraspecific essential oil and anatomical variations of Salvia nemorosa L. (Labiatae) populations in Iran Majid Mahdieh ⁎ , Seyed Mehdi Talebi, Mahsa Akhani Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Arak University, 381568-8349, Arak, Iran ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Anatomy Essential oil Population Salvia nemorosa ABSTRACT Salvia nemorosa L. is an aromatic medicinal herb of Labiatae family and distributed in various parts of the world including Iran. Infraspecific classification of Salvia nemorosa L. has been discussed extensively in literatures. Although, different infraspecific taxonomic ranks (such as variety and subspecies) are identified for this plant, no such rank is found for this species in Iran. Therefore, in this study, six populations of S. nemorosa were collected from various parts of the country and their leaf anatomical traits and essential oil compositions of aerial parts were examined. Data were analyzed by SPSS and MVSP software. Analysis results obtained by gas chromato- graphy–mass spectrometry (GC/MS) revealed that some populations (such as Tehran and Polor) had unique essential oil compositions. These populations were separated from the rest of samples and clustered separately. The anatomical study was created similar results and Tehran as well as Polor populations were far from other populations. Each of these populations had distinct anatomical features. On the basis of anatomical and phy- tochemical data and given the fact that the mentioned populations are different in their essential oil composi- tions and leaf anatomical traits and placed far from each other we can define Tehran and Polor population as two ecotypes and chemotypes for Iran. 1. Introduction Infraspecific variations widely occur in different characteristics of plants such as essential oil amount and compositions (Yarmoohammadi et al., 2017), morphological (Talebi et al., 2014), genetical (Sheidai et al., 2014) and also anatomical traits (Mantuano et al., 2006). The essential oil composed of various compounds such as mono- terpenes, sesquiterpenes and phenylpropanoids. The terpene syntheses can produce many products from a single substrate, therefore different types of terpenes are observed in plants (Degenhardt et al., 2009; Dudareva et al., 2013). Essential oil compounds have multiple roles in the plant such as: providing defense mechanism against herbivores, pathogens, as well as pollinator attraction in the plant-plant commu- nication. Moreover, its constituents have a wide range of biological effects on humans and animals, and are used for treatment of various disorders (Maffei et al., 2011; Dudareva et al., 2013). Pervious investigations have shown that different factors such as species genotype and ecological factors have effects on terpene (Niinemets et al., 2004; Figueiredo et al., 2008; Lakuŝić et al., 2012). In addition, variation patterns of different secondary metabolisms are potentially highly species-specific (Ormeňo et al., 2007a; Usano- Alemany et al., 2014) or in many cases organ-specific(Dudareva et al., 2013). This condition was seen in different species for example Salvia officinalis L. (Russo et al., 2013) and Matricaria chamomilla L. (Formisano et al., 2015). Ankanna et al. (2012) have stated that the chemotaxonomy science or chemical taxonomy is used for the plant taxonomy on the basis of their chemical compounds. All plants produce secondary metabolites, which are derived from primary metabolites. The chemical structure of the secondary metabolites and their biosynthetic pathways are often specific and restricted to taxonomically related plants and therefore useful in taxonomy. This classification method is considered better in comparison to traditional method due to the ease of working metho- dology. In this chemotaxonomy, the materials to be analyzed can be dried or crushed and the fresh or complete materials are not the com- pulsory requirements. The study of secondary metabolites, especially the essential oil, is helpful to taxonomist, pharmacologists and phytochemists to solve se- lected taxonomical problems (Singh, 2016). Thompson et al. (1998) defined the chemical classification of po- pulations or individual of plants within the same species to chemotypes according to essential oil chemical composition. Therefore, the names of identifying chemo-types show the main chemical component (or components) of essential oils. For example, the five chemotypes of https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2018.06.061 Received 28 February 2018; Received in revised form 9 June 2018; Accepted 14 June 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: m-mahdiyeh@araku.ac.ir (M. Mahdieh). Industrial Crops & Products 123 (2018) 35–45 0926-6690/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T