Petitgrain from citrus aurantium: Essential oil of paraguay

Abstract

Oil of petitgrain is the distilled product of the leaves of the bitter orange plant, Citrus aurantium L. Although the French word petitgrain means "little seed," it actually referred to the oil distilled from the unripe fruitlets, which began in France in the late seventeenth century. The name petitgrain was retained even after the leaves and twigs became the source of the essence. Several citrus oils are expressed or distilled from the fruit peel, but they cannot accurately be called petitgrain. About 70 percent of the world production of this essential oil, which is used in soap, cosmetics and flavorings, comes from Paraguay. The raw material for petitgrain comes from a plant well adapted to the Paraguayan environment in which it grows and is processed by a rudimentary technology using local supplies of fuel. The product has a high weight-value ratio that makes it possible to bear transport costs to distant markets from that isolated country. Distilled essence from Paraguay was the brainstorm of Benjamin Balansa (18251892), a peripatetic French botanist whose scientific activities carried him to Indochina as well as the Western Hemisphere (Chevalier, 1942; Astre, 1947). When Balansa arrived in Paraguay in 1875 to collect plants, he found much land east of the Paraguay River covered with woods of naturalized citrus trees. Balansa, recognizing the potential for essential oil manufacture even in this remote corner of South America, began distilling oil-bearing parts of the bitter orange tree in 1876. At first flowers were processed to make neroli oil, while leaves and twigs yielded oil of petitgrain. Encouraged by those results, Balansa constructed a still of his own design in Buenos Aires and brought it upriver to Paraguay in 1877. By 1885, emulators had established 30 petitgrain operations in the country (Bourgade, 1889). Labor problems and a negligible world demand for the more expensive oil of neroli focused commercial attention on distillation of the leaves rather than the flowers. Until the 1930's, essential oil production in Paraguay was dominated by several large producers, including a Balansa descendant. Gradually, however, petitgrain manufacture became largely a peasant activity, one characterized by many small operations using crude equipment. Bitter orange cultivation and/or petitgrain distillation today are in the hands of about 15,000 Paraguayan country people and only a few large producers (Fig. 1). Some individuals work as wage laborers for those who have plantings. Most peasants who do grow bitter orange lack their own distillation equipment and either rent it from their neighbors or sell their raw material to proprietors of stills who are also growers. The majority of farms on which bitter orange plants are cultivated cover less than five hectares, with a fourth of them between five and ten hectares. Though small, these farming units are diversified. Subsistence crops, particularly maize and manioc, share space and attention with commercial crops of peanuts, tobacco, cotton, castor bean and bitter orange. Uncertain prices for any one crop mean that few peasants are willing to risk too much specialization, so that petitgrain is but one of the diverse products that help to bring a modest cash flow into the household.