Essential oil content and chemical composition of Lippia gracilis Schauer cultived in the Sub-meddle São Francisco Valley.

Lippia gracilis is a native species of the Caatinga, whose leaves have significant potential for economic use by chemical and pharmaceutical industries due to the presence of thymol and carvacrol. Considering the lack of agronomic data for the species, especially for semi-arid conditions where it is possible to find natural populations, the aim of this work was to assess the effects of drought and different doses of organic fertilization in biomass production and content, yield and chemical composition of the essential oil. The experiment was conducted with 16 treatments that consisted of presence and absence of organic fertilizer, mineral fertilizer and irrigation. The analyzed variables after 120 days of culture were: total length until the last leaf, fresh weight of aerial parts with stem, leaf dry weight a nd fresh weight, content and chemical composition of essential oil, and moisture. In the conditions where this st udy was conducted, it was observed that the organic and mineral fertilization and irrigation positively inf luenced the production of biomass and essential oil content. However, cultivation methods did not significantly affect the chemical composition of essential oils, which shows the hardiness of the species to changes in availability of water and nutrients.