By Pascal Champagnat, Gilles Figueredo, Jean-Claude Chalchat, André-Paul Carnat and Jean-Marie Bessière

Abstract: Abstract: This work reports the chemical composition of essential oils of Vetiveria zizanioïdes (L.) Nash from nine countries: Brazil, China, Haiti, India, Java, Madagascar, Mexico, Reunion and Salvador. Analyses were performed using GC/MS, and about 110 constituents were identified in oils, mainly sesquiterpenes. The characteristic constituents were β-vetispirene (1.6-4.5%), khusimol (3.4-13.7%), vetiselinenol (1.3- 7.8%) and α-vetivone (2.5- 6.3%). No meaningful differences were observed comparing the composition of nine geographical origins. Hierarchical clustering and principal component analysis (PCA) of the compositional data of the oil samples confirm the relative homogeneity of V. zizanioides by the content of major constituents (khusimol, β-vetivenene and β-vetispirene). Key Word Index: Vetiveria zizanioides, Poaceae, vetiver oil, essential composition, khusimol.

Introduction
Vetiveria zizanioides (L.) Nash (syn. Chrysopogon zizanioides (L.) Roberty) is a robust perennial grass, rhizomatous, with culms up to 2 m high (1). This species is native of India and has been introduced in many tropical countries (Java, Haiti, Reunion, etc.). The plant is grown for its aromatic roots, source of an essential oil known as oil of vetiver. This oil is principally used in high class perfumery where its persistent odour makes it of great value as a fixative in admixture with other perfumes.

Numerous studies have been published upon essential oils of V. zizanioides. It was possible to distinguish three representative periods. The first took place 60 years ago with Pfau and Plattner (2), Naves and Perrottet (3).The second period was between 1960 and 1970, where the works of Marshall (4-6), Andersen (7-10), Nigam and Komae (11,12), and Garnero (13) were particularly significant by structure determination and synthesis of some compounds of vetiver oils. Concerning the different geographical origins of vetiver oils, a single study was published by Lemberg and Hale (14). This work reported quantitative determination of only nine main components of the oils. The studies realized by Weyerstahl and Marschall (15-18) between 1990 and 2000 only concerned Haitian vetiver oil; a finalizing on V. zizanioides was realized in 2002 by Maffei (19). More recently, Adams et al. reported the composition of vetiver cultivar oils in relation to their DNA-fingerprint (20).

The aim of the present study was to complete and to compare chemical composition of vetiver oils from nine countries by principal components analysis (PCA): Brazil, China, Haiti, India, Java, Madagascar, Mexico, Reunion and Salvador. The compositional data of nine samples were submitted to multivariate statistic analysis.