Chemical constituents of Vanilla pompona Schiede

This study reports the phytochemical investigation of leaves and stems of Vanilla pompona Schiede, combining Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) workflow, enabling preliminary volatile/ semi-volatile profiling.Three compounds: 5α,8α-epidioxyergosta-6,22-dien-3β-ol, sitostenone and 4-(β-D-glucopyranosyloxy)benzyl alcohol are previously unreported from Vanilla pompona.A longchain alkyl 4-hydroxycinnamate (tentatively assigned as tetradecyl 4-hydroxycinnamate), was also isolated together with bis[4-(β-Dglucopyranosyloxy)-benzyl]-2-isopropylmalate, which corroborates a recent independent report from this species.Structures were identified using NMR analyses.Ergosterol peroxide, although frequently detected in plant extracts, may reflect an association with endophytic fungi or photo-oxidation of ergosterol.A further twentyfour compounds were tentatively identified by GC-MS analysis using the National Institute of Standards and Technology library.These included eight phenolic compounds, eight aliphatic acids, six terpenes and two esters.Several of them are considered important markers associated with vanilla flavour quality.As only the leaves and stems were analysed here, these data provide a basis for future comparisons with the pods of V. pompona, and for chemotaxonomic studies within the genus Vanilla.