This study was designed to examine the essential oils compositions of Litsea glauca Siebold and Litsea fulva Fern.-Vill. growing in Malaysia. The essential oils were achieved by hydrodistillation and fully characterized by gas chromatography (GC-FID) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The study identified 17 and 19 components from the leaf oils from L. glauca (80.7%) and L. fulva (81.5%), respectively. The major components of L. glauca oil were β-selinene (30.8%), β-calacorene (11.3%), tridecanal (7.6%), isophytol (4.8%) and β-eudesmol (4.5%); whereas in L. fulva oil gave β-caryophyllene (27.8%), caryophyllene oxide (12.8%), α-cadinol (6.3%), (E)-nerolidol (5.7%), β-selinene (5.5%) and tridecanal (5.0%). Anticholinesterase activity was evaluated using Ellman method. The essential oils showed moderate inhibitory activity on acetylcholinesterase and butyrylcholinesterase assays. Our findings demonstrate that the essential oil could be very useful for the characterization, pharmaceutical, and therapeutic applications of the essential oil from the genus Litsea.
This paper presents the application of Solid Phase Micro Extraction (SPME) coupled with Gas Chromatography - Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) and Gas Chromatography - Flame Ionization Detector (GC-FID) in characterizing the agarwood incense. The work involved three types of SPME fibres at 30 minute sampling time. The fibres are 50/30 μm divinylbenzene-carboxen-polydimethysiloxane (DVB-CAR-PDMS), 65 μm polydi methylsiloxane-divinylbenzene (PDMS-DVB) and 85 μm carboxen-polydimethyl siloxane (CAR-PDMS). The results showed that among the many compounds extracted by GC-MS coupled with SPME, six compounds were substantially found in high quality agarwood incense due to their high percentage area (%). They are β-maaliene, α-elemol, β-selinene, 10-epi-γ-eudesmol, agarospirol and caryophellene oxide. The finding offers a new approach for establishing the volatile profile of agarwood incense components as well as for agarwood grading and discrimination.