Wood Essential Oils from Neotropical Hardwoods

Numerous tropical hardwoods are prized for their use furniture, paneling, musical instruments, and artwork. In this work, we have explored the potential of using wood shavings of Neotropical hardwoods as value-added commodities as fragrant essential oils. Three tropical hardwoods, collected from Guanacaste, Costa Rica, were obtained from a furniture workshop and hydrodistilled to obtain the essential oils. Cedrela odorata (cedro amargo, Spanish cedar) yielded a yellow essential oil (4% yield) rich in sesquiterpene hydrocarbons: cis-α-bergamotene (2.6-4.5%), β-gurjunene (5.5-12.2%), α-maaliene (3.4-6.0%), β-curcumene (12.8-13.1%), and δ-cadinene (7.7-26.3%). Swietenia macrophylla (caoba, big-leaf mahogany) gave an essential oil in 1.0% yield. The major components of S. macrophylla wood essential oil were α-copaene (7.2-7.7%), α-muurolene (2.8-5.1%), δ-cadinene (26.4-33.0%), τ-muurolol (6.0-6.1%), α-cadinol (5.2-7.1%), and sandaracopimara-8(14),15-diene (2.4-5.1%). Hydrodistillation of Pachira quinata (pochote) wood shavings have a low yield (0.1%) of pale-yellow essential oil dominated by carvacrol (80.6%). The relatively high essential oil yields of Spanish cedar and big-leaf mahogany along with their fragrant odors suggests that these wood essential oils should be considered for use in the flavor and fragrance industry.