Identification of floral fragrances in freesia cultivars and hybrids by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

Floral fragrance compounds of one freesia specie with four cultivars and ten hybrids were studied using static headspace extraction method followed by GC-MS analysis. In total, 43 compounds were identified with an average range of 3 and 25 compounds per plant. The main classes of compounds in most plants were isoprenoids, fatty acid derivatives accompanied by sulphur-containing compounds and nitrogen-containing compounds. Among the compounds, linalool (26.6-85.4%) was identified as the major component. In the parents and the studied progenies, the segregation laws of the scent traits in this cross were preliminarily unveiled and stable inheritance of the main components were observed. Based on the measurement of S?rensen's index of similarity (Is), nonmetric multidimensional scaling (MDS) was used to detect meaningful underlying dimensions and similarities between the investigated cultivars. The MDS analysis showed two groups of cultivars. These results were also discussed from the view of common pollinators like butterflies, moths, and bees.