Abstract
Phytochemicals are the plant’s chemical constituents, their type and quantity being affected by environmental factors, e.g. climate and soil, also by the karyotype and stage of development, especially the former. Acorus calamus (sweet flag), for example, contains β-asarone, which has halucinogenic and carcenogenic properties. The Asian tetraploid contains 70–96% β-asarone, the European triploid contains less than 15% while it is absent in the North American diploid (Schultes and Hofman, 1992; Motley, 1994).
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© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Wickens, G.E. (2001). Phytochemicals. In: Economic Botany. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0969-0_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0969-0_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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