Metabolite profiles of essential oils and SSR molecular markers in Juniperus rigida Sieb. et Zucc. from different regions: A potential source of raw materials for the perfume and healthy products

Juniperus rigida Sieb. et Zucc. (J. rigida) is the traditional Chinese medicine with therapeutic effect of rheumatoid arthritis and dropsy. The essential oils showed unique industrial production potential including flavoring, cosmetics and household products. However, current research on J. rigida were mainly focused on their morphological features with few consideration of breeding quality evaluation and production development. This study combined metabolite profiles with SSR molecular marker which correlated with essential oils to estimate the differentiation between chemotypes and genotypes of J. rigida to evaluate the breeding quality for further production development. The chemotypes were evaluated by GC–MS fingerprint combined with chemometrics, in which the J. rigida derived from Fugu (S2), Jinhua (S8) and Fengcheng (S10) owned the best quality due to their rich volatile compositions and strong bioactivity. The J. rigida from 10 origins were assorted into three quality clusters and 8 essential oils compositions were selected as the indicated compounds that contributed to the quality evaluation of J. rigida. In addition, 23 pairs of SSR molecular marker primer sequences were developed and the PCA analysis results also divided J. rigida into three categories. Correlation analysis showed the metabolites content differed from genetic diversity. The ylangene, α-farnesene, neryl isobutyrate, and α-guaiene were the indicating compounds for the selection of high-quality J. rigida origin. These results may further provide theoretical basis for the quality evaluation of J. rigida and give some insights into the source application and industrial product development as well.