Water stress before harvest of pepper‑rosmarin



Water stress before harvest of pepper‑rosmarin

Ivan Caldeira Almeida Alvarenga(1), Rafael Vasconcelos Valadares(2), Ernane Ronie Martins(2), Flávio Gonçalves Oliveira(2), Lourdes Silva de Figueiredo(2) and Mauro Koji Kobayashi(3)

(1)Universidade Federal de Lavras, Departamento de Agricultura, Caixa Postal 3037, CEP 37200‑000 Lavras, MG, Brazil. E‑mail: pytchouai@yahoo.com.br (2)Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Campus Montes Claros, Instituto de Ciências Agrárias, Avenida Universitária, no 1.000, Bairro Universitário, CEP 39404‑000 Montes Claros, MG, Brazil. E‑mail: rafaelvvaladares@hotmail.com, ernane_martins@oi.com.br, flaviogoliveira@ibest.com.br, lourdes.figueiredo@oi.com.br (3)Universidade Estadual de Montes Claros, Centro de Ciências Agrárias, Rua Reinaldo Viana, no 2.630, Bairro Bico da Pedra, CEP 39440‑000 Janaúba, MG, Brazil. E‑mail: mauro.koji@unimontes.br

Abstract – The objective of this work was to assess the effect of different periods of water stress before harvest of pepper-rosmarin (Lippia sidoides) on the contents of essential oil and flavonoids. The experiment was carried out during 270 days of cultivation, with drainage lysimeters, in a completely randomized block design with five treatments: 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8 days of water suppression before harvest, with four replicates. Fresh and dry matter yield, essential oil content, total flavonoids content, and water potential and temperature of leaves were determined. There was a decrease of approximately 50% in oil content and of 60% in total flavonoid content with the reduction of leaf water potential in 0.3 MPa. Essential oil is more sensitive to water stress than total flavonoids.

Index terms: Lippia sidoides, essential oil, flavonoids, leaf water potential, medicinal plant, water stress.

Estresse hídrico antes da colheita de alecrim‑pimenta

Resumo – O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar o efeito de diferentes períodos de estresse hídrico antes da colheita de alecrim-pimenta (Lippia sidoides) sobre o conteúdo de óleo essencial e de flavonoides. O experimento foi realizado durante 270 dias de cultivo, com lisímetros de drenagem, em delineamento inteiramente casualizado, com cinco tratamentos: 0, 2, 4, 6 e 8 dias de supressão de irrigação antes da colheita, com quatro repetições. Foram determinados produção de matéria fresca e seca, teor de óleo essencial, teor de flavonoides totais, tensão e temperatura de folhas. Observou-se decréscimo de aproximadamente 50% no teor de óleo e de 60% no teor de flavonoides totais, com a diminuição do potencial hídrico foliar em 0,3 MPa. O óleo essencial é mais sensível ao estresse hídrico do que os flavonoides totais.

Termos para indexação: Lippia sidoides, óleo essencial, flavonoides, potencial hídrico foliar, planta medicinal, estresse hídrico.


Pepper-rosmarin (Lippia sidoides Cham.) is an aromatic and medicinal species originated from the Brazilian Northeast and the semiarid regions of northern Minas Gerais state, Brazil. It is used to combat fungal

infections, mouth inflammation, scabies, and bad odors of feet and armpits. Its essential oil, composed of a mixture

of thymol and carvacrol, has antimicrobial properties against fungi and bacteria, and is effective in controlling

Aedes aegypti larvae (Carvalho et al., 2003).

The behavior of medicinal plants is greatly influenced by water deficits, in terms of the production and the formation of compounds, such as alkaloids, flavonoids, parthenolides, and essential oils (Penka, 1978; Carvalho

et al., 2003b; Castro et al., 2004; Bortolo et al., 2009).

The level and duration of stress are fundamental in the response of aromatic and medicinal plants in terms of

plant quality (Charles et al., 1990; Morvant et al., 1998).

However, studies on the irrigated cultivation of these species are incipient, and plant behavior under stress conditions still needs further investigation (Carvalho

et al., 2003a; Alvarenga et al., 2009).

Abiotic factors, such as temperature, cultivation season, time of harvest, and water availability, strongly

influence medicinal plants. Therefore, studies related

to this interaction are important to obtain information on the most appropriate irrigation management for the production of compounds of interest (Barros et al.,


The objective of this work was to evaluate the effect of different periods of water stress before harvest of pepper-rosmarin on the contents of essential oil and


Materials and Methods

The experiment was carried out at the experimental

site of Instituto de Ciências Agrárias of Universidade

Federal de Minas Gerais, located at Montes Claros, MG, Brazil (16°44'02"S, 43°51'23"W, at 646 m of altitude). The climate is classified as Aw, semiarid

tropical savanna with dry winter and rainy summer, according to Köppen (Leite et al., 2004).

The experiment was carried out with drainage lysimeters in a Red Oxisol (Santos et al., 2006), with the following characteristics: pH (H2O),

5.9; 2.4 cmolc dm-3 of Ca2+; 1.0 cmolc dm-3 of Mg; 6.72 mg kg-1 of P Mehlich; 18.78 mg L-1 of Prem; 90 mg kg-1 of K; 1.4 cmol

c dm -3 of Al; 4.04 cmolc dm-3

of H + Al; sum of bases of 3.63 cmolc dm-3; base

saturation of 47%; 11.7 g kg-1 of organic matter;

45 g kg-1 of coarse sand; 355 g kg-1 of fine sand; 300 g kg-1 of silt; 300 g kg-1 of clay.

The growing period occurred from 9/15/2009 to

6/11/2010, totaling 270 days of cultivation. Plants were derived from regrowth of plants pruned at 120 days after transplanting, and the seedlings were produced with cuttings. Treatments consisted of different periods

of water suppression before harvest: T1, 0; T2, 2; T3, 4; T4, 6; and T5, 8 days without irrigation. A completely

randomized block design, with four replicates, was

used. At 95 days of cultivation, a supplemental

fertilization of 12 kg m-2 of cattle manure was applied (Assis et al., 2009). Before the beginning of the treatments, plants were characterized as to height and

crown and stem diameter, measured at 5 cm above soil,

using graduated tape and digital caliper, respectively.

Plants were grown in row spacing of 0.4x0.4 m, with

nine plants per lysimeter.

At the beginning of the experiment, the soil at the bottom of the lysimeters was saturated and kept at field

capacity until irrigation suppression. However, the total water volume consumed by the culture could not be determined, since there was no coverage in the area and, when the rainy season started, it was not possible to determine the percolated blade. Irrigation was carried out based on the reference evapotranspiration (ETo)

calculated according to the Hargreaves-Samani equation:

Eto = [(Tmed + 17.8) × 0.0023 × Qo (Tmax - Tmin)0.5],

in which Eto is the potential evapotranspiration in

millimiters per day; Tmed is the average daily temperature in °C; Tmax is the daily maximum temperature in °C; Tmin is the daily minimum temperature in °C; Qo is the incident radiation in mm per day (Pereira et al., 1997). Meteorological data used to determine the ETo were collected with the automatic weather station Davis Vantage Pro 2 (Davis Instruments Corp., Hayward, CA, USA). The soil was maintained

at field capacity with irrigation frequency of three days

until the onset of treatments.

An infrared thermometer Infraterm, (Incoterm, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil) was used to monitor leaf

temperature, which was measured at 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 h in fully developed leaves. A Scholander pressure

chamber (Scholander et al., 1964) equipped with a digital manometer was used to evaluate leaf water potential, and nitrogen gas was used as a pressurizer.

Top branches with about 15 cm were collected at 3:00 am on alternate days, and leaf tension was measured in all treatments. The water stress day index

(WSDI) and the relation between the relative yield and water stress in the culture were determined by the method described by Katerji et al. (2000), using the equation Y = a (b × WSDI), in which: Y is the

relative productivity in %; a is the value of the ordinate (relative yield), which should be approximately equal to 100; b is the percent loss in productivity per unit

of increase in the WSDI, which is dimensionless. The WSDI was determined by the equation WSDI = (ψci - ψsi)/n, in which: ψci is the daily leaf water potential before dawn in the control treatment

over the stress period; ψsi is the daily leaf water potential before dawn for each treatment during the stress

period; n is the number of days with measurements. In

the present study, the variable relative yield referred to

essential oil content and total flavonoid content, i.e., only the levels of fresh matter (FM), dry matter (DM),

and oil production were considered, since these factors may be more important in short periods of stress applied close to harvest.

After water suppression, plants from each plot were collected at 10 cm above ground and then sampled

for determination of FM, weighed, and taken to an


fresh samples of about 100 g, which were taken to a Clevenger machine and hydrodistilled during 4 hours to determine the mass of essential oil on an analytical

scale. Plant material from the extraction was subjected to drying process in a forced air oven at 65oC until constant weight to determine DM. The oil percentage

was expressed as w w-1 regarding DM.

After grinding the dried material, total flavonoids were extracted from leaves according to a method adapted from Santos & Blatt (1998). The standard curve

was prepared with increasing concentrations of rutin,

and expressed in mg g-1. Data were subjected to mean

test for comparison of the average yield of DM, FM,

oil, and leaf temperature and tension among treatments, using the software SAEG (SAEG, 2007). Means were

compared by Tukey’s test, at 5% probability.

Results and Discussion

The highest temperatures, close to 35oC, were

observed at the beginning of the experiment (Figure 1). There was a significant decrease in temperature in the

last 60 days of cultivation, in which the minimum temperatures were close to 17oC, coinciding with the period of data collection on leaf water potential and

temperature. The minimum and maximum reference

evapotranspiration values were close to 2 and 7 mm per day, respectively, which can be attributed to the wider temperature range. There was a decrease in the evapotranspiration rate at 100 days before harvest,

due to the extended rainy season of the year. The air relative humidity was relatively low in the first 40 days of cultivation, with values below 50%, but was close to 70% with the start of the dry season, around April

for the region.

After cultivation, the plants had the following average

values: height of 1.67±0.26 m (mean ± standard deviation), crown diameter of 1.07±0.29 m, and stem diameter of 14.00±3.14 mm. Figueiredo et al. (2009) observed heights exceeding 1.80 m, in the same conditions, at

300 days of cultivation. Pepper-rosmarin yield,

considering FM and DM, showed no significant

differences between treatments, with average

productivity of 8.38±0.98 Mg ha-1 for FM and

4.26±0.48 Mg ha-1 for DM. No differences were

expected between these variables due to the short

period of treatment.

Pepper-rosmarin FM yield can reach 15.96 Mg ha-1 under the same edaphoclimatic conditions (Figueiredo et al., 2009). According to Lopes (2010), the best irrigation

depth is 1.9 ETo, with productivity of 9.59 Mg ha-1 for

FM, with a growing period of 120 days. In the present study, the average productivity was 8.38 Mg ha-1

after 270 days, keeping soil at field capacity. There


were no significant differences regarding essential

oil production, which had an average production of

42.47±13.47 kg ha-1, and moisture content, which

ranged from 47.17 to 51.84%.

Leaf temperature varied significantly after different

periods of stress (Table 1). The highest average temperature was observed after eight days of irrigation supression, possibly due to less water availability for transpiration and, consequently, less capacity

for heat exchange with the environment. In coffee

plants (Coffea arabica L.), proper leaf temperatures enhance productivity, since high temperatures limit photosynthesis, causing injuries, such as leaf scald

and flower abortion (Damatta, 2004). Leal et al.

(2006) evaluated coffee in intercropping systems as an alternative to decrease leaf temperature, and found

differences of up to 5oC in intercropped plants when compared to plants under sun, during the hottest hours of the day. Therefore, leaf temperature behavior regarding ambient temperature can be used as an indicator of water status in plants, which is a possible

indicator for irrigation (Testi et al., 2008).

There were no significant differences among

treatments for essential oil content (Table 1), which

ranged from 1.27 to 0.56%. Lopes (2010) observed lower values, of 0.40 and 0.60%, depending on the

irrigation regime. These results indicate that water suppression can be managed in order to save energy and water in the production process. Dunford &

Vasquez (2005) evaluated the influence of water stress in oregano mexicano (L. berlandieri Schauer) at different stages of plant development and found levels

of essential oil ranging from 0.7 to 2.5%. However, there were no significant differences among treatments,

as observed in the present study. Oil composition was

also monitored, and no significant differences were

observed for levels of thymol and carvacrol.

Total flavonoid content ranged from 0.008 to

0.0139 g g-1 regarding DM, and linearly decreased with

the prolongation of water stress (Figure 2). Bortolo

et al. (2009), while assessing the concentration of

flavonoids in flowers and plants of marigold (Calendula

officinalis L.) as affected by different irrigation depths,

found no significant differences in the metabolite of flowers, although flavonoid content decreased with the increase of irrigation depth. Flavonoids are attractive

to pollinators, and, as water stress accelerates the cycle of annual plants, the concentrations of the active principle increases. However, this was not observed for pepper-rosmarin.

Values for leaf water potential were relatively low, ranging from -0.41 to -0.66 MPa (Table 1). Nogueira

et al. (2001) found values between -1 and -5.5 MPa

after 20 days of water stress, on acerola (Malpighia emarginata D.C.) plants. Plants without water restriction or subjected to water stress may have the same leaf water

Table 1. Average values of leaf water potential, temperature, and essential oil content in pepper-rosmarin (Lippia sidoides Cham.) under water stress before harvest(1).

Days of water stress Water leaf potential (MPa)

Leaf temperature (oC)

Oil content


0 -0.44b 19.79b 1.17ab

2 -0.41b 19.53b 0.95ab

4 -0.47b 19.87b 0.56b

6 -0.54ab 19.94b 0.58b

8 -0.66a 21.06a 1.27a

CV (%) 12.27 26.27 31.10

(1)Means followed by equal letters, in the columns, do not differ by Tukey’s

test, at 5% probability.

Figure 2. Essential oil and total flavonoid contents in

pepper-rosmarin (Lippia sidoides Cham.) according to the water stress daily index (WSDI). **Significant by the F test,


potential, according to the levels of water vapor loss

through respiration (Schulze, 1986). In coffee, water potential ranged from -0.3 to -0.8 MPa for irrigated plants and from -0.6 to -1.5 MPa for plants under

water stress (Nascimento, 2006). Pepper-rosmarin did not show great tensions in comparison to these other species, possibly due to the short period of stress.

The values found for the WSDI were also relatively

low, ranging from 0.05 to 0.3 MPa, which could be

related to the lower tensions observed during the

experiment. Another possible explanation is that

the method used to obtain the WSDI was adapted

for essential oil and total flavonoid content, which

have lower values in comparison to the production

of FM, for example. Essential oil and total flavonoid

contents decreased linearly, following the water stress

magnitude, with daily decreases of approximately 50% for oil content and 60% for total flavonoids due

to the reduction of 0.3 MPa in leaf water potential

(Figure 2). Oliveira et al.(2005) observed production losses of about 10% for beans, for this same range of

water stress, while Garcia et al. (2009) reported values of daily water stress with production losses of nearly

25%, at about 0.8 MPa. These results indicate that

pepper-rosmarin plants are sensitive to water stress.


1. Pepper-rosmarin plants are very sensitive to water stress.

2. Water stress in pepper-rosmarin decreases

essential oil content and total flavonoids up to 50 and 60%, respectively, with the reduction of 0.3 MPa in

leaf water potential.

3. Essential oil from pepper-rosmarin is more

sensitive to water stress than flavonoids.


To Fundo de Amparo à Pesquisa de Minas Gerais and to Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, for financial support.


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Figure  1.  Oscillation  temperature,  evapotranspiration,  and  relative humidity during the crop cycle of pepper-rosmarin  (Lippia sidoides)

Figure 1.

Oscillation temperature, evapotranspiration, and relative humidity during the crop cycle of pepper-rosmarin (Lippia sidoides) p.3

Table 1.

Figure  2.  Essential  oil  and  total  flavonoid  contents  in  pepper-rosmarin  (Lippia  sidoides  Cham.)  according  to  the  water stress daily index (WSDI)

Figure 2.
