Evolução da informação científica na produção de camomila [Chamomilla recutita (L.) Rauschert], usos e extração de óleo essencial nos últimos cinquenta anos

Abstract

Chamomile (Chamomilla recutita L. Rauschert), belonging to the Asteraceae family, is currently one of the most relevant medicinal plants, being the most cultivated in the world. Thus, the objective of this research was to carry out a survey of scientific works published in the last 50 years (1970 to 2020) with chamomile, verifying the main lines of studies, with a focus on essential oil and its applications. For this purpose, the “Web of Science” and “Scielo” platforms were used to survey scientific papers with the species Chamomilla recutita (Matricaria chamomilla) applying the terms "Chamomilla" (in the case of Scielo, the word "chamomile" was also used ), "essential oil", "Matricaria" and "Chamomile" (considering the words in the title of the articles). All works with access to complete documents or summaries only were considered. The results were separated by types of approach in: agronomic area (cultivation, nutrition, irrigation, cultural treatments, etc.), medicinal (uses for the treatment of health problems), chemistry (identification of compounds and activity) and methods of extraction of the essential oil. A total of 579 articles were selected, divided between the five decades (1970-2020). It can be observed that studies in relation to the production of chamomile and essential oil, as well as those related to their uses, obtained a relevant increase over the decades, in this way, we can observe that the interest in the cultivation, the properties of the compounds and the possibility of varied uses provided a greater search for scientific information on the subject. Thus, consolidated issues such as the extraction of essential oil demonstrate a lower demand on the part of researchers.