THE VARIABILITY OF CARAWAY (CARUM CARVI L.) ESSENTIAL OILS

The aim of this work was to highlight the great variability in the contained substances of caraway (Carum carvi L.) samples obtained from different types of cultivation and harvest years. The experiment included a total of 145 samples. At first, the isolation of essential oils by the means of steam distillation was performed, followed by the analysis of individual components using gas chromatography, where the main components carvone and limonene were determined. The presented results indicate that the coefficient of correlation between the essential oil content and the carvone content is relatively low statistically highly significant positive correlation (r = 0.32**) and for limonene there is even lower negative statistically highly significant correlation (r = -0.23**), suggesting a strong variability among individual samples regardless of their harvest year and origin.