Litsea Cubeba Essential Oil Content And Composition Analysis

This study takes a famous natural spice plants of our country named Litsea cubeba as materials, which compared yield of essential oils and changes of essential oil components with different organs of Litsea cubeba, different fruit harvest and from different growing areas, different storage methods and under different storage days. The results of the study provide theoretical basis for the definition of the best harvest of Litsea cubeba , the use of essential oils in Litsea cubeba's different organs as well as the storage after the Litsea cubeba's harvest. The major findings are as follows:Taking the small wild Litsea cubeba in Xiao keng town Shaoguan city, Guangdong Province as materials, I compared and analyzed essential oil content and composition in diffrent anagen phase from mid-May to mid-September. It was found that the essential oil content was up to 6.14 ml/100g in late July, while the main component - citral content was up to 64.58 percent. In conclusion, on the purpose to extract the oil in Shaoguan, Guangdong Province, the harvest of Litsea cubeba's fruit takes late July as the best, in which the fruit is dark green. Harvested too early or too late will cause yield of the Litsea cubeba's fruit oil and citral content in oil to be lower , resulting to yield and quality of essential oils are dropped.The whole plant of Litsea cubeba contains essential oils. The analysis of different organs of content and composition of the Litsea cubeba essential oil shows that, the content and components of Litsea cubeba essential oil in different organs vary widely. Litsea cubeba essential oil yield of different organs are fruit> flower >root> stem> leaves. The difference between stems and leaves are not significant, while the rest organs reached the level of 0.01 shows significant difference. Essential oil composition of different organs are quite different. The main components of the essential oil of fruit is citral, followed by limonene; the main components of essential oil of flower is eucalyptol, followed p-menth-1-en-8-ol,α-phellandrene andβ-myrcene ; the main components of essential oil of root is citronellal, followed by citral and limonene; the main components of essential oil of stems and branches is hexadecanenitrile, followed by Oleamide and palmitic anhydride; the main components of essential oil of leaves is ocimene, followed by palmitic anhydride and cineole. The essential oils cannot replace each other since the Litsea cubeba essential oil composition of different organs is obviously different.I compared the essential oil composition and content in the fruit Litsea cubeba of which delivers Litsea cubeba produced in Shaoguan, Guangdong province with those produced in the suburban of Lengshuijiang City, Loudi City, Hunan province and those in Luotian Town, Jishui County, Ji an City, Jiangxi Province. Here comes the result. Jishui County, Jiangxi province make the highest yield of essential oils for 6.99ml/100g, however, Guangdong Province produce the the highest total content of citral, 64.58%, with the best quality. What's more, the highest content per unit weight is produced in Jiangxi Province.Litsea cubeba harvested in early August will be sub-stored in four different ways respectively, -18 degrees Celsius, 4 degrees Celsius, dried at room temperature and airtight storage at room temperature. Apart at 3d, 6d, 9d, 15d, 20d, 25d, 30d, we will begin the process of the conduct of essential oil extraction. And then, compare the extraction percentage and analyze the effect. According to the test data, different way of storage methods make different effects on the citral content. If stored in a short period of time (9d less), the better environment of frozen storage is the less minimal loss of citral. As for long-term storage, 4 degrees Celsius will be the suitable temperature. In terms of the storage cost, the most economical storage method is using an airtight material to pack the litsea cubeba in a cool place under natural storage, avoid exposing to the sunlight. Whatever the storage methods, it is inappropriate to put litsea cubeba under long-term storage. As far as production concerned, oil extraction should be processed as soon as possible after harvesting.