Salvia abrotanoides (Kar.) Sytsma is a medicinal plant in Lamiaceae family which commonly known as “Caspian Russian sage”. This species grows in various regions of Iran including Khorasan, Esfahan, Golestan and Semnan provinces [1]. An important and valuable class of abietane diterpenescalled tanshinones are found in the roots of this plant.Some ofthe biological properties including antioxidant, leishmanicidal and cytotoxic activities are related to tanshinones [2].This study was aimed to investigatethe accumulation of cryptotanshinone, tanshinone I and tanshinone IIA in roots of three wild populations of S. abrotanoidescollected from Kalat, Dargaz and Torogh regions in Khorasan Razavi province. The amounts of these compounds were assessed by HPLC method. The correlation analysis was carried out to determine the effect of climate and soil factors on the content of tanshinones. According to the results, significant differences (p<0.05)intanshinones contents were observedamong different populations. The content of cryptotanshinone, tanshinone I and tanshinone IIA ranged from 227-392 mg.100g-1 DW, 5-12 mg.100g-1 DW and 6-14 mg.100g-1 DW, respectively, which indicates that the level of cryptotanshinone is much higher than those of tanshinone I and tanshinones IIA. In general, Kalat population had the highest ability to accumulate all the three types of tanshinones.This study also showed that the high accumulation of tanshinones in the roots of Kalat population seems to be related to the environmental conditions regarding to the positive correlation between altitude, minimum temperature and soil calcium concentration with the contents of three examined tanshinones.

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