The harvested of eucalyptus leaves as sources of essential oil production from timber forest plantation

Abstract

Eucalyptus tree especially on the leaves part, contains essential oil that commercially valuable. However, it is widely known that Eucalyptus tree plantation is designed solely to produce timber, so that their leaves were simply became waste during timber harvesting. This study aimed to estimate the potential production of essential oil from Eucalyptus leaves in PT Surya Hutani Jaya forest concession in Kutai Kartanegara Districs, East Kalimantan. Thirty eucalyptus trees were selected directly on the harvesting block and treated as sample for estimating the weight of the leaves. Leaves were collected and separated from its twig and branch manually by hand. Following the eucalyptus canopy structure, 1/3 of the most upper part of the leaves that representing young leaves were separated from other leaves part and each were weighted using digital scales. This research finds that average weight of single Eucalyptus leaves at the harvested age is 5.56 kg (standard deviation = 2.63 kg). Bias was calculated as much as 18%. Using confidence interval 95%, the weight of the leaf’s ranges from 4.58 – 6.55 kg.