Armoracia rusticana G. Gaertn., B. Mey. & Scherb. (commonly known as horseradish) is well known for the irritating, pungent smell and bitter taste. In Hungary, horseradish has been cultivated and used extensively in food industry, as well as in traditional medicine. Characteristic smell, taste and possible pharmacological effects comes from the plant' s essential oil. Developing essential oil extracting technology is not only proved to be useful for economical purpose, but also for scientific research due to the high content of isothiocyanate, a potential anti-carcinogenic agent present in the essential oil. Therefore, this study starts with the development of oil extracting technology, first in laboratory-scaled and then medium-scaled distillation. The efficiency of the new technology is taken under investigation by examining the yield of extracted oil, the completion of extraction process and the quality (content) of essential oil.

Although there have been studies on horseradish’s isothiocyanates content, at the moment of this study, there has been no analytical investigation on neither isothiocyanate, glucosinolate profile nor the enzymatic activities in horseradish cultivated in Hungary. The analytical study starts with gas chromatography and mass spectrometry analysis on horseradish essential oil in order to reveal the full profile of horseradish isothiocyanates, which was compared to data collected from literature after for checking the quality of the extracted oil. The second part of the analytical study concentrates on development of the novel capillary electrophoresis method for instantly separation and detection of isothiocyanates and their parent molecules (glucosinolates) as well as revealing activity of myrosinase enzyme on the conversion of glucosinolates into isothiocyanate.

Armoracia macrocarpa (Waldst. & Kit.) Baumg. or Debreceni horseradish, is the relative species of Armoracia rusticana. Debreceni horseradish has been used for condiment purpose and known as “sweet radish”. Unlike its famous relative, there is neither information on Armoracia macrocarpa' s phytochemistry, anatomical structure nor enzymatic activities. The final part of this study gives the comparison on glucosinolate contents (by liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry), anatomical structure (by cross sections) and enzymatic activities (by gel electrophoresis and spectrophotometry) between Armoracia rusticana and Armoracia macrocarpa.