Progress in Essential Oils

Neroli Oil

In 1977, Kekelidze et al. analyzed an oil produced from bitter orange flowers.

As most synthetic linalool contains dihydrolinalool (0.5-2.0%), this impurity can be used to determine adulteration of neroli oil with synthetic linalool. Frey (1988) showed that using the selective ion monitoring mode in GC/MS he could detect down to 50 ppm of dihydrolinalool in neroli oil, which corresponds to the addition of 0.5-1.0% synthetic linalool in the oil. Konig et al. (1992) proved through chiral GC analysis that the (R)-(-)-linalool enantiomer was predominant in neroli oil. They also found that (S)-(+)-(E)-nerolidol was the main (>98%) enantiomer found in this same oil.

Bitter orange flower oil produced in China was subjected to analysis by GC/MS by Zhu et al. (1993).

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