Conservation and Evaluation of Mint Essential Oil

Abstract Not Available

Essential oil (EO) is a secondary product formed by aromatic plants and is used in food and pharmaceutical industries. It has various chemo preventive properties against liver, lung, colon and gastric cancer¹. The EO isolated from mint reported as anti-inflammatory, carminative, antiemetic, diaphoretic, antispasmodic, analgesic, stimulant, emmenagogue (menstrual flow stimulant), anti-catarrhal, fungicide and anti-oxidant².

In order to increase aromatic crops productivity several techniques are implied. The potential techniques are of drying and distillation. Several studies in literature have reported extraction of essential via both methods.

Drying techniques (DRTECHs) play important roles in the EO production from aromatic plants. The drying of various fresh parts of aromatic plants such as leaves, stems, roots, flowers, seeds and fruits is necessary to reduce weight, volume, fungal and molds attacks, cost of transportation, space of storage and increase the shelf life³.

The EO is basically isolated from aromatic plants by distillation techniques (DISTECHs) such as hydro (or water) distillation (HD) and steam distillation (SD). The DISTECHs can produce significant changes in the yield and constituents of EO such isomerization, saponification or polymerization of the more labile components⁴.

The techniques of drying and distillation play very important roles in EO productions, so a new study was carried out to evaluate the EO composition of mint plants under various drying (shade, sun and oven drying) and distillation (HD and SD) techniques⁵.

Mints were harvested and isolation of essential oil was done. The GC and GC-MS analysis were performed for identification of volatile compounds.

Obtained results reported that DRTECHs brought about different decreases in the values of EO contents, major and some minor constituents in EO compared with the fresh status. This may be due to some chemical transformations during the drying process⁶.

The DISTECHs resulted in significant differences in the EO and major components of summer savory. The EO contents and constituents were changed according to species and subspecies of mint which may be due to genetic differences between the species or sub species. Also these results may be due to the changes in herb weight per plant⁷.

It can be concluded that DRTECH and DISTECH resulted in different changes in the essential oil extracted from subspecies or species of mint.

REFERENCES

1. Thoppil, R.J. and A. Bishayee, 2011. Terpenoids as potential chemopreventive and therapeutic agents in liver cancer. World J. Hepatol., 3: 228-249.
2. Ahmed, A.M.A., F.M.A.M. Elkady and A.K. Khalid, 2018. Morphological and chemical characters of Petroselinum crispum (Mill) subjected to some biostimulants. Asian J. Plant Sci., 17: 96-106.
3. Mujumdar, A.S., 2006. Some recent developments in drying technologies appropriate for postharvest processing. Int. J. Postharvest Technol. Innov., 1: 76-92.
4. Sefidkon, F., K. Abbasi, Z. Jamzad and S. Ahmadi, 2007. The effect of distillation methods and stage of plant growth on the essential oil content and composition of Satureja rechingeri Jamzad. Food Chem., 100: 1054-1058.
5. El-Gohary, A., K.A. Khalid and M.S. Hussein, 2018. Effect of drying and distillation techniques on the oil ingredients of mint (Mentha sp.). Asian J. Crop Sci., 10: 151-159.
6. Rao, L.J., M. Singh, B. Raghavan and K.O. Abraham, 1998. Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L.): Impact of drying on its flavor quality. J. Food Qual., 21: 107-115.
7. Khalid, A.K., W. Cai and A.M.A. Aisha, 2009. Effect of harvesting treatments and distillation methods on the essential oil of lemon balm and apple geranium plants. J. Essent. Oil Bear. Plants, 12: 120-130.