Capability of wild Rosa rugosa and its varieties and hybrids to produce sesquiterpene components in leaf glandular trichomes

The sesquiterpene contents in leaves of wild Rosa rugosa and of sixty-one h ybrid rugosas were quantitatively measured by a GC analysis. In this group of samples, the greater the number of glandular trichomes the hybrid rugosa s possessed on their leaves, the larger the amount of sesquiterpenes they a ccumulated. In contrast, those having no leaf glandular hairs contained onl y a trace amount of sesquiterpene components. The concentrations of bisabor osaol A (1) and carota-1,4-dienaldehyde (2) as representative sesquiterpene s of R. rugosa were positively correlated with the density of the glandular trichomes. Furthermore, an approximately regular correlation was observed between the concentrations of 1 and 2 in most of the sesquiterpene-producin g hybrid rugosas, regardless of their productivity. This suggests that a ma jor part of these hybrid rugosas have inherited from R. rugosa the ability to produce two skeletally different sesquiterpenes in parallel with a pheno type to develop leaf glandular trichomes. This investigation also led to di scovering 1-dominant (e.g., Amelie Gravereaux and Purple Pavement), 2-domin ant (e.g., David Thompson), and other-dominant (e.g., Martin Frobisher) typ es of sesquiterpene-producing hybrid rugosas.