Toxin Reviews ISSN: 1556-9543 (Print) 1556-9551 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/itxr20 The genus Perovskia Kar.: ethnobotany, chemotaxonomy and phytochemistry: a review Majid Mohammadhosseini, Alessandro Venditti & Abolfazl Akbarzadeh To cite this article: Majid Mohammadhosseini, Alessandro Venditti & Abolfazl Akbarzadeh (2019): The genus Perovskia Kar.: ethnobotany, chemotaxonomy and phytochemistry: a review , Toxin Reviews, DOI: 10.1080/15569543.2019.1691013 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15569543.2019.1691013 Published online: 29 Nov 2019. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=itxr20 TOXIN REVIEWS https://doi.org/10.1080/15569543.2019.1691013 REVIEW ARTICLE The genus Perovskia Kar.: ethnobotany, chemotaxonomy and phytochemistry: a review Majid Mohammadhosseinia , Alessandro Vendittib and Abolfazl Akbarzadehc aDepartment of Chemistry, College of Basic Sciences, Shahrood Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrood, Iran; bDipartimento di Chimica, Universita di Roma “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy; cDrug Applied Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Perovskia Kar. is a small genus from the Lamiaceae family which includes a variety of promising Received 19 May 2019 medicinal and phytochemical properties. This review paper was undertaken to integrate all the Accepted 6 November 2019 data published about the ethnobotany, phytochemistry and biological activities of species KEYWORDS belonging to the genus Perovskia during the past decades. A literature survey showed that to Biological activity; date more than forty new compounds belonging to different classes of natural products have chemotaxonomy; ethno- been isolated and successfully characterized from different Perovskia species worldwide. These botany; lamiaceae; Perovskia compounds are extensively discussed in this review article, also from the chemosystematic Kar.; Phytochemistry standpoint. Moreover, these herbal plants and their phytoconstituents have a great potential of biological activity that are described in detail, too. Introduction these species are endemic in Iran, namely P. abrota- noides Karel., P. artemisoides Boiss. and P. atriplicifolia Herbal plants are of paramount interest for human Benth, which are vegetating in mountain environ- beings and have direct impacts on their lifestyle ments at an average altitude of 2200–4200 m above (Wansi et al. 2018, 2019, Sarker and Nahar 2018a, 2018b). In fact, medicinal plants possessing a large sea level (Mozaffarian 1996, Khaliq et al. 2006). number of phytochemicals and phytoconstituents are According to the literature, there are seven species for among the best remedies for the treatment of a wide this genus in Pakistan (Nasir and Ali 1990, Perveen spectrum of persistent and dangerous diseases et al. 2006). The vernacular names attributed to this “ ” “ ” (Mohammadhosseini 2017b, Mohammadhosseini et al. genus in Persian are Berazamble , Domou and “ ” 2017b). The chemotaxonomy is based upon the classi- Gevereh (Mozaffarian 1996). The photographs of fication of plant species regarding their most abun- three Perovskia species, namely P. abrotanoides Karel., dant and similar constituent compounds in the P. atriplicifolia Benth. and P. scrophulariifolia Bunge are corresponding chemical profiles (Mohammadhosseini shown in Figure 1. et al. 2019) and nowadays this approach of study is Among the Perovskia genus, there is also an entity growing remarkably (Venditti et al. 2018). of problematic classification, namely P. angustifolia The genus Perovskia Kar. (Lamiaceae family) is a Kudr. whose name is currently unresolved (www.the- small genus belonging to the Nepetoideae subfamily, plantlist.org). As shown by Rechinger (1982), the main tribe Mentheae, subtribe Salviinae (Olmstead 2005), distribution regions of the endemic species of this which comprises nine species, also known collectively genus are concentrated in North (Mazandaran), North with the popular name “Russian Sage”: P. abrotanoides Eastern (Golestan, Khorasan Razavi), central (Isfahan) Kar., P. angustifolia Kudrjasch. (syn. P. kudrjaschevii and Southeastern (Khorasan Jonoobi and Sistan & Gorschk. & Pjat.), P. artemisioides Boiss., P. atriplicifolia Baloutchistan) provinces of Iran. Benth. (syn. P. pamirica C.Y.Yang & B.Wang), P. bot- The aim of this review article is to integrate the schantzevii Kovalevsk. & Kochk., P. kudrjaschevii published and available data concerning the genus Gorschk. & Pjataeva, P. linczevskii Kudrjasch., P. scro- Perovskia. To conduct this study, the data were phulariifolia Bunge and P. virgata Kudrjasch. Three of collected through a comprehensive search on CONTACT Majid Mohammadhosseini [email protected] Department of Chemistry, College of Basic Sciences, Shahrood Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahrood, Iran ß 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 2 M. MOHAMMADHOSSEINI ET AL. Figure 1. The photographs of three Perovskia species: A: P. abrotanoides Karel., B: P. atriplicifolia Benth. and C: P. scrophulariifo- lia Bunge. Scopus database under the title “Perovskia” accessed species type, major constituent components, dominant on 12 September 2017 and revisited on 29 group of constituting natural compounds, the mean October 2019. yield of the obtained essential oils, part(s) of the studied species, sampling area as well as number and Results and discussion total percentage of each profile have been repre- sented. Accordingly, in most of the reported chemical Chemical profiles of the extracted essential oils profiles, oxygenated monoterpenes are among the (1995 to date) major constituent components of the corresponding Many herbal plant species are rich sources of essential oils (Abduganiev et al. 1996, Basher et al. 1997, oils which are stored in their secretory glands and Nuriddinov et al. 1997, Morteza-Semnani 2004, Sajjadi released upon heating. To separate volatile essential et al. 2005, Arabi et al. 2008, Kakhky et al. 2009, oils, traditional hydrodistillation technique has been Sardashti et al. 2013, Hafez Ghoran et al. 2016). In frequently used from long time ago (Akhlaghi et al. accordance with these studies, the main characterized 2009, Shafaghat et al. 2017). However, during the oxygenated monoterpenes were bornyl acetate, 1,8- recent years, some fairly advanced methods have cineole and camphor, among which the highest fre- been employed for fast and effective isolation of quency is due to 1,8-cineole. A perusal of this table essential oils as secondary metabolites from a wide also demonstrates that in some of the reported chem- variety of plant materials (Hashemi-Moghaddam et al. ical profiles (Jassbi et al. 1999, Dabiri and Sefidkon 2014, 2015, 2018). These methods are based on direct 2001, Pourmortazavi et al. 2003, Erdemgil et al. 2008), application of microwave radiation on plant materials despite the negligible differences, the total percentage in a couple of strategies, named microwave assisted- of oxygenated monoterpenes and monoterpene hydrodistillation (MAHD) (Mohammadhosseini 2017a, hydrocarbons were approximately the same and com- Mohammadhosseini et al. 2017a) and solvent free parable. Sesquiterpene hydrocarbons like b-caryophyl- microwave extraction (SFME) (Mohammadhosseini lene, a-caryophyllene and a-humulene were also the et al. 2016), among others. On the other hand, volatile dominant fraction of some of the other profiles of fractions can be separated from different plant organs Perovskia plants (Abduganiev et al. 1996, Dabiri and when using headspace analysis which are either dir- Sefidkon 2001). Regarding the general categories, ectly introduced onto the injection port of GC-MS or a-pinene, limonene, d-3-carene, b-pinene, camphene trapped on the surface of solid phase microextraction and (E)-b-ocimene were found as the predominant (SPME) fibers prior to their injection to gas chromatog- natural compounds in some of the other profiles with raphy instrumentation (Mohammadhosseini 2015a, monoterpene hydrocarbons prevailing groups (Dabiri 2015b). and Sefidkon 2001, Inouye et al. 2001, Nezhadali et al. Characterization of chemical profiles of volatile 2009, Oreizi et al. 2014). Compared to the oxygenated essential oils relating to some species of the genus monoterpenes, non-terpene hydrocarbons were very Perovskia has been the subject of some previous uncommon in the identified profiles of Perovskia spe- reports. In this relation, the brief data concerning each cies with (E)-9-dodecenal, octadecanoic acid methyl chemical profile of the studied plants have been sum- ester, isopropylhexadecanoate as well as 2,2,5,5-tetra- marized in Table 1. As can be seen in this table, the methyl hexane (Ashraf et al. 2014). On the other hand, Table 1. Main components of essential oils, volatile constituents and extracts from different species of Perovskia genus worldwide. Characterization Identified Dominant Extraction or analysis Plant name (s) Main components (%) YEOa group method (s) methods (s) Part(s) Country Num. % Ref. P. scrophulariifolia bornyl acetate (17.8%),b-caryophyllene NRb OMc and SHd HDe GC-MS Whole part Uzbekistan 20 100 (Abduganiev Bunge. (14.2%),a-caryophyllene (11.7%), 7- et al. 1996) isopropyl-5,10-dimethyIbicyclo[4.4.0]- deca-l-3.4-triene (10.1%) and farnesol (7.6%) P. angustifolia 1,8-cineole (12.0–27.5%), a-pinene