Javad Safaei-Ghomi,* Abdolhamid Bamoniri and Alireza Hatami and Hossein Batooli

Abstract: The essential oil of flowering aerial parts of Crambe orientalis L., which belongs to Cruciferae family, was obtained by hydrodistillation method in 0.1% yield and analyzed by GC and GC/MS. Twenty-three compounds representing 98.7% of the oil were identified. Among them 3-butenyl isothiocyanate (51.4%), henicosane (9.3%), epoxy-oleic acid (7.6%) and hexadecanoic acid (7.2%) were the major constituents of the oil.

<i>Crambe</i>, which belongs to the family Cruciferae, consists of about 40 species (1) distributed in Europe, southwest and central Asia and eastern Aferica (2). Cruciferae family is used in traditional medicines (3–5). Many genera of this family have antimicrobial effect because of their isothiocyanate derivatives (6,7). Numerous plants in this family used as vegetable produce indol-3-carbinole in cooking process thus they have anticarcinogenic and antimutagenic properties (8-10). This family has also antioxidative effect (11). <i>Crambe maritima</i>, which is known as Sea-kale, is used as a vegetable (12, 13). It is grown for its blanched shoots that heal injury (14). <i>Crambe abyssinica</i> Hochst, known as Abyssinian-kale, is used as an animal food (15) and its oilseed is used in industry (16–18). <i>Crambe cordifolia</i> is used as potherb (13) and cooked vegetable (19, 20) as a cure for itch (21). <i>Crambe genus</i> in Iran includes three species, <i>Crambe hisperica</i>, which grows in Kouzestan, Lorestan and Fars Provinces, <i>Crambe kotschyana</i>, which grows in Fars, Khorasan and Mazandaran Provinces and <i>Crambe orientalis</i> L. that often grows in Fars, Mazandaran, Azarbayejan, Hamedan, Lorestan, Markazi, Semnan, Kerman, Isfahan, Tehran, and Yazd provinces (2, 22). These species have an antipruritic effect and are used as vegetable and are nutritious (19, 20, 23–25). The essential oil of <i>Crambe orientalis</i> (syn. <i>C. persica</i> Boiss.), which grows in Iran and named as “Sepideh” has not been studied to date. So we decided to characterize the chemical composition of its oil. The present paper deals with the detailed analysis of the oil by capillary GC and GC/MS with the determination of the percentage composition.