An enzyme-assisted method to extract vetiver (Vetiveria zizanioides L.) essential oil

Abstract

Vetiver (Vetiveria zizanioides (L.) Nash) has various applications in many different fields, such as agriculture, medicine, etc. However, the traditional long vetiver essential oil (VEO) extraction process consumes a lot of energy. Therefore, this study is directed to the use of enzymes to support the VEO distillation. According to the results, the pretreated vetiver root with viscozyme was highly applicable as the extraction yield was enhanced by 23% and the extraction time was decreased by 10 h compared to the traditional method. The pretreatment conditions were surveyed to enhance the effectiveness of the viscozyme pretreatment. By using GC–MS, 63 active ingredients were identified and semi-quantified in hydrodistillation extracted VEO, accounting for about 84.72% of the total essential oil content obtained. The GC–MS results show that there was no significant difference between the non-enzyme-assisted and the viscozyme pretreatment samples.