abstractthe first chemical and enantioselective analyses of the essential oil from the leaves of mauria heterophylla kunth were carried out. the dry plant materialproduced an essential oil with a 0.09 +/- 0.05% yield by weight. the volatile fraction was submitted to gc-ms (qualitative) and gc-fid (quantitative) analyses, on two different stationary phases. a total of forty-four constituents were detected and quantified with at least one column, corresponding to about 85.5% of the whole oil mass. limonene (15.2%), (e)--caryophyllene (11.1%), -phellandrene (10.9%), germacrene d (6.6%), -pinene (6.4%), myrcene (3.9%), -phellandrene (2.8%), bicyclogermacrene (2.8%), (e)--farnesene (2.2%) and -cadinene (1.2%) were major components. furthermore, the study was complemented with the enantioselective analysis of eleven common chiral terpenes, carried out on two -cyclodextrin-based chiral selectors. among the chiral metabolites, (1r,4s)-(+)-camphene, (1r,5r)-(+)--pinene, (s)-(+)--phellandrene and (s)-(+)--phellandrene were enantiomerically pure, whereas -pinene, sabinene, limonene, linalool, terpinen-4-ol, -terpineol and germacrene d were present as scalemic mixtures.keywords: mauria heterophyllagas chromatographymass spectrometryenantiomers-cyclodextrinecuador disclosure statementno potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).