The chemical composition of the aerial parts essential oil of a Sicilian endemic Astragalus species: Astragalus nebrodensis (Guss.) Strobl

The genus Astragalus L. that includes more than three thousand species, is the largest of the Fabaceae family. Astragalus species are annual or perennial stemmed herbs or small shrubs, extensively distributed in tropical, sub-tropical and temperate regions. Species of this genus have been largely used in the ethno medicine of several countries, although some of them are very poisonous both for cattle and humans. In the present study, the chemical composition of the essential oil (An) from the aerial parts of Astragalus nebrodensis (Guss.) Strobl., an endemic species of Sicily, never studied before, was evaluated by GC–MS. The main components of A. nebrodensis EO were trans-2-hexenal (16.4%), hexanal (15.3%), and 2-pentyl furan (14.2%). Several papers have been published on the essential oils of other Astragalus species, and consequently, to compare them with An, Principal Component Analyses (PCA) and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) have been carried out.