Exploratory Analytical Characterization of Phenolic Profiles and Antioxidant Activity in Three Lavender Genotypes

This exploratory study investigated the phenolic composition and antioxidant activity of dried inflorescence extracts prepared from three commercially cultivated lavender materials: Lavandula angustifolia ‘Moldoveanca 4’, Lavandula angustifolia ‘Sevtopolis’, and Lavandula × intermedia ‘George 90’. Using HPLC-DAD-ESI+ analysis, fourteen phenolic compounds predominantly belonging to the hydroxybenzoic acid, hydroxycinnamic acid, and flavone classes were tentatively annotated, and their levels were estimated as class-equivalent concentrations. Descriptive quantitative differences were observed among the three extracts for all fourteen compounds. The chromatographic sum of their class-equivalent concentrations showed the highest value in ‘Sevtopolis’ (1064.44 ± 1.03 µg/mL), followed by ‘George 90’ (924.03 ± 1.13 µg/mL) and ‘Moldoveanca 4’ (825.87 ± 2.3 µg/mL). The ‘Sevtopolis’ extract also showed the highest DPPH radical-scavenging activity, followed by ‘George 90’ and ‘Moldoveanca 4’. Taken together, these findings provide a preliminary analytical characterization of three specific lavender extracts and describe sample-specific phenolic and DPPH patterns under the conditions employed, without supporting genotype-level inference.