Chemical Composition of Volatile Oils of Aquilaria malaccensis (Thymelaeaceae) from Malaysia

Abstract

Volatile oils of Aquilaria malaccensis Benth. (Thymelaeaceae) from Malaysia were obtained by hydrodistillation and subjected to detailed GC-FID and GC/MS analyses to determine possible similarities and differences in their chemical composition in comparison with the commercial oil. A total of thirty-one compounds were identified compared with twenty-nine identified in the commercial oil. The major compounds identified were 4-phenyl-2-butanone (32.1%), jinkoh-eremol (6.5%) and α-guaiene (5.8%), while the major compounds in the commercial oil were α-guaiene (10.3%), caryophellene oxide (8.6%), and eudesmol (3.2%). The results of the present study showed that more than nine sesquiterpene hydrocarbons were present, which is more than previously reported. Analysis also showed that the number of oxygenated sesquiterpenes in this study were much less than previously reported. Among the compounds detected were α-guaiene, β-agarofuran, α-bulnesene, jinkoh-eremol, kusunol, selina-3,11-dien-9-one, oxo-agarospirol and guaia-1(10),11-dien-15,2-olide.

Aquilaria spp. (agarwood) as source of health beneficial compounds: A review of traditional use, phytochemistry and pharmacology

“…It is worth noting that in publications dealing with agarwood, the term 'agarwood oil' is used more frequently than 'essential oil'. The motivation to study the compounds in oil is often related to the development of scientific grading and quality control for commercial applications (Ismail et al, 2014;Ismail et al, 2013;Tajuddin et al, 2013;Tajuddin and Yusoff, 2010). Variations in species and origin were also studied, as they are considered to be related to the oil quality (Hashim et al, 2014b;Nor Azah et al, 2008).…”

Investigation of common compounds in high grade and low grade Aquilaria Malaccensis using correlation analysis

“…This analysis extracted major volatile components such as sesquiterpenes and it is popular in market [9]. The studies on colour in oil volatile components has been carried out and they found that different colour has different chemical constituents [6,14]. For example, GC-MS chromathographed that oxidoagarochromone as a pale yellow in oil component [19].…”

“…However, standard agarwood oil quality is limited due to human nose cannot accept many samples in one time and easily get fatigues especially when dealing with continuous production [14]. The human sensory panel also limited in terms of subjectivity, poor reproducibility, time consumption and large labor expense [15].…”

“…Laboratory technique, such as GC-MS analysis [6,8,10,14,16,17] was preffered to solve the conventional problems. GC-MS analysis identifies the significant existence of common compositions such as valerianol [2,3], pentadecanoic, tetradecanoic, dodecanoic and hexadecanoic acid [3], elemol [2,7,13], β-agarofuran, α-agarofuran, epi--eudesmol and agarospirol [2] and α-guaiene [8].…”

The grading of agarwood oil quality using k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN)

“…However, standard agarwood oil quality is limited due to human nose cannot accept many samples in one time and easily get fatigues especially when dealing with continuous production [7]. The human sensory panel also limited in terms of subjectivity, poor reproducibility, time consumption and large labor expense [8].…”