Biomassa, rendimento e composição de óleo essencial de Melissa officinalis em função de adubação orgânica e mineral

Abstract

Common balm, Melissa officinalis is a medicinal plant with great increment perspective for the cosmetics industry due to its essential oil. Studies on agricultural practices are required to optimize its yield. This study evaluated the effect of different doses of organic fertilizer (cow manure) in comparison with mineral fertilizer on biomass production and essential oil yield. The experiment was done at Glória Experimental Farm, of Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, and the oil extraction was done at the no Centro de Genética, Biologia Molecular e Fitoquimica of Instituto Agronômico de Campinas (IAC). The experimental design was randomized blocks with six treatments (0, 1, 2, 4, 8 kg/m2 of manure and a mineral fertilization with 30g of 4- 14-8/m2), with four repetitions. Hydro-distillation was done with a modified Clevenger distiller for essential oil extraction. Plant height, total and leaf fresh matter and leaf dry matter, per plant and per hectare, were affected as a function of organic fertilizer dose, presenting a significant change with linear adjustment to the doses of manure applied. The two fertilization forms were better than the non-fertilized control for all variables, except for the proportion leaf length and width and oil contents in the leaf dry matter. There was no significant difference for the fresh leaf oil contents between the nonfertilized control and the mineral fertilization. It can be concluded that common balm is responsive to organic fertilization with manure and mineral fertilization for biomass production; essencial oil yield presented the same contents for al treatments, wich change was the percentage (%) of some chemical contents. The major contents were neral, geranial e citronelal.