Aromatic oils are called Essential Oils (EO) because of their ease of solubility in alcohol to form essence. These oils are found in the uncombined form in various parts of plants and employed for flavours, perfumes, cosmetics, beverages, disinfectants, medicines, and stabilizers. EO possess various constituents mainly sesquiterpenoids, benzenoids, phenylpropanoids etc. The demand for C. deodara plant material and its essential oil has been increasing in pharmaceutical, chemical, food and perfumery industries because of its favourable physicochemical characteristics and therapeutic efficacy. C. deodara has been used as antiseptic, insecticides, anti-inflammatory, molluscicidal and anti-fungal. Therefore, the main objective of this experimental work is to investigate the effect of different particle sizes of plant material on the yield of essential oil; to investigate the effect of processing time on C. deodara EO yield and their physicochemical characteristics and analysis of essential oil constituents using GC-MS. Different size of C. deodara material namely, grade A (large size), grade B (medium size) and grade C (small size) material has been extracted using Clevenger’s apparatus to measure its physicochemical properties. The processed grade B material was extracted with n-hexane by the maceration process to analyse variation in physicochemical properties. From the results, it has been observed that medium-size material of C. deodara has a higher percentage of yield because it has an optimum surface area to release its constituents. Temperature variations have a direct impact on physical as well as chemical properties. Higher temperatures and pressures result in a ‚harsh‘ aroma that changes the aromatic properties and decrease the oil‘s therapeutic values. Distillation time has also an impact on the yield as well as on the physical and chemical properties of the material. Thin-layer chromatography showed 10 spots of different colours in essential oil. The major constituent‘s percentage obtained after GC-MS analysis as α-himachlene (13.83%), γ-himachlene (12.00%), β-himachlene (37.34%), Deodaron (0.43%), α-atlantone (4.53%), Z, γ-atlantone (2.77%), E, γ-atlantone (3.34%) and E, α-atlantone (10.63%).
Key words: Cedrus deodara, Physicochemical properties, GC-MS analysis, Percentage yield, Optical rotation, Thin-layer Chromatography (TLC).
