Retrosynthetic Analysis of the Diels-Alder Reaction

To determine the reactants needed to synthesize a Diels-Alder product  

Locate the double bond in the product. The diene that was used to form the cyclic product had double bonds on either side of this double bond, so draw in those double bonds and remove the original double bond. 

The new a bonds are now on either side of the double bonds. Deleting these cr bonds and putting a tt bond between the two carbons whose a bonds were deleted gives the needed reactants—that is, the diene and the dienophile. 

Now let s use these two rules to determine the reactants for the synthesis of a bridged bicyclic compound. 

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In a similar manner, the retrosynthetic analysis of the Diels-Alder reaction is represented below ... 

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