Abstract

Tarragon, Artemisia dracunculus L., is a herbaceousplant belonging to the Asteraceae. French tarragon is mainly used as a culinary herbin oil, sauces, vinegars, mustards and spices, and the French call it the ‘king of herbs’.Tarragon possesses many biological activities, such as anti-epileptic, anti-diabetic, anti-inflammatory, antibiotic and etc. The most important classes of biologically active substancesin the herbage are essential oils, coumarins, flavonoids, and phenolcarbonic acids. Plants harvested in the stage of full flowering, dried in shade. A Clevenger-type apparatus was used for hydrodistillation. The compounds of essential oil were analyzed by combination of GCFIDand GC-MS. Nineteen compounds were identified, which represented about 99.7% of the total detected constituents. The main constituents of the essential oil were Estragole (82.47%), Beta-phellandrene (6.03%), E-beta-ocimene (4.71%), Allo-ocimene (1.81%), limonene (1.70%), Alpha-pinene (1.19%) and Spathulenol (1.01%).