Bio-morphological and chemical characterization of rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L.) biotypes

The use of herbs in the food industry has recently increased significantly because of their antioxidant action on lipid degradation, besides their traditional role in food aroma. In particular, rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L.) extracts have proved to possess such useful antioxidant properties. The present research that reports on a study on the morphological and chemical characteristics, conducted on rosemary clones obtained from wild material collected in different environments of southern Italy, was aimed at better characterizing and evaluating their potential for present and possible new food technological uses. In addition to morphological characterizations aimed to detect differences among clones, a technological qualitative oil component “fingerprint” was conducted by means of GC-MS, comparing two different extraction techniques of the essential oil fraction (traditional steam distillation and dichloromethane solvent extraction) for the quantitative and qualitative differences.