Volatiles as Chemosystematic Markers for Distinguishing Closely Related Species within the Pinus mugo Complex.

Headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) coupled to GC/MS analysis was used to identify the constituents of pine-needle volatiles differentiating three closely-related pine species within the Pinus mugo complex, i.e., P. uncinata Ramond ex DC., P. uliginosa G.E.Neumann ex Wimm., and P. mugo Turra. Moreover, chemosystematic markers were proposed for the three analyzed pine species. The major constituents of the pine-needle volatiles were α-pinene (28.4%) and bornyl acetate (10.8%) for P. uncinata, δ-car-3-ene (21.5%) and α-pinene (16.1%) for P. uliginosa, and α-pinene (20%) and δ-car-3-ene (18.1%) for P. mugo. This study is the first report on the application of the composition of pine-needle volatiles for the reliable identification of closely-related pine species within the Pinus mugo complex.