A comparative study of the volatiles emitted by flowers of three Hedychium species from La Réunion

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

With the objective to develop a scent database that could be used for perfume and cosmetics applications, a comparative analysis of the floral profiles close to one hundred odorous flowering plants found in Reunion Island has been undertaken for the last few years in our laboratory. A part of this work relating to three Hedychium species (the well-known H. coronarium but also H. flavescens and H. gardnerianum) is presented here. To achieve this, the solid-phase microextraction (SPME) on living flowers coupled to GC/MS was used. A total of 53 volatiles were identified belonging to aliphatic ketones, monoterpenes (hydrocarbons and oxygenated), sesquiterpenes (hydrocarbons and oxygenated), phenylpropanoids/benzenoids and miscellaneous. The phenylpropanoid/benzenoid and terpenoid classes were the main volatile classes. (E)-β-ocimene, linalool, (E,E)-α-farnesene, (E)-nerolidol, methyl benzoate, methyl salicylate, (E)-isoeugenol and indole were the major compounds detected. Results also revealed significant aroma variation among the different flowers.