The present study was conducted to evaluate the variation in secondary metabolites production by diploid and mixoploid Trigonella foenum-graecum L. collected at vegetative, flowering and fruiting stages. Diploid and mixoploid plants were grown from, respectively, untreated and treated seeds with colchicine 0.05%. The essential oils composition was determined by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS). The results indicated a lack of essential oil during the vegetative and fruiting stages for diploids and mixoploids, respectively. For the other stages, the richest in essential oils was the flowering one (95.97%) for the first and vegetative stages (93.66%) for the second. The qualitative composition also varied between different plants. The most important compound from fenugreek was phytol. Thus, induction of polyploidy could be an effective biotechnological tool to increase plant performance particularly for interest molecules production.

Keywords: Fenugreek, developmental stage, ploidy level, essential oil composition.