A comprehensive review on Citrus aurantifolia essential oil: its phytochemistry and pharmacological aspects

Abstract

Citrus essential oil, commonly, known as lime oil, has been widely reported in traditional system of medicine. Industrially, oil is isolated by mainly by hydrodistillation from fruit and peel of Citrus aurantifolia, family, Rutaceae. Cultivation practice of citrus plants dates back for over 4000 years and are one of most valuable fruit crops in the world. In this review, we aim to summarise the phytochemical and biological properties of citrus oil. The literature was collected from various online resources such as e journals, books and magazines. The citrus essential oil is globally used in food industry to impart citric flavour and odour to cuisines. Llime juice and oil is known to possess multiple biological properties including anti-cancer, antimicrobial, antioxidant, antiulcer, anti-inflammatory, hypolipidemic, antityphoid and hepatoprotective properties. Due to potent antibacterial and antifungal properties, citrus oil is becoming important component of skin care products. The medicinal importance of plant is due to presence of various secondary metabolites, alkaloids, carotenoids, coumarins, essential oils, flavonoids, phenolic acids, and triterpenoids. The citrus oil is rich in aromatic compounds namely, monoterpenes and their derivatives, aldehydes, ketones, esters, alcohols such as limonene (58.4%), β-pinene (15.4%), γ-terpinene (8.5%), citral (4.4%) and others. The bitter taste and aroma of citrus fruit peels is attributed to limonoids. p-caryophyllene constitute 5.7% of all the sesquiterpenes. On the basis of the available information, we conclude that citrus oil possess huge potential to be developed into pharmaceutical products.