Rosemary Oil In 1996, Casabianca and Graff determined that, although linalool was a minor constituent of rosemary oil in French oil, It possessed the following enantiomeric distribution:
(3R)-(-)-linalool (23-34%) : (3S)-(+)-linalool (66-77%).
An oil of rosemary produced from plants cultivated in northeastern Spain was analyzed by Guillen et al. (1996) using GC and GC/MS. The compounds identified in this oil were:
In 1997, Boutekedjiret et al. compared the composition of Algerian rosemary oil produced either by steam distillation or water distillation. A summary of the results of this GC and GC/MS study are shown in Table I. Although the results reveal some large quantitative differences, the oil yield from the water distillation was 0.58% whereas that of steam distillation was 1.20%. These results should have been much closer; hence, the results of the analysis of the water-distilled oil must be considered to be inaccurate and no conclusions should be drawn from them.
