Simultaneous Determination of Thujopsene and Cedrol in Cedarwood Oils from Thuja sutchuenensis and Platycladus orientalis by GC-MS

• Published in: Journal of essential oil-bearing plants (Dehra Dun) Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 48 - 56
• Main Authors: Huaping, Lei, Fengyin, Liang, Yonggang, Wang, Wei, Peng, Weiwei, Su, Cuiping, Yang, ning, Wang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2011
• Subjects: cedarwood oil; cedrol; gas chromatography; mass spectrometry; monitoring; Platycladus orientalis; supercritical fluid extraction; Thuja; Thuja sutchuenensis; Thujopsene
• ISSN: 0976-5026; 0972-060X; 0976-5026
• DOI: 10.1080/0972060X.2011.10643900

Thujopsene and cedrol are the main components of cedarwood oil (CWO) and their concentrations have been traditionally used to determine the oil’s commercial value. Therefore, quantification of thujopsene and cedrol is very important. In this paper, GC-MS in selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode was developed to determine simultaneously thujopsene and cedrol in CWOs from Thuja sutchuenensis and Platycladus orientalis extracted by hydrodistillation (HD) and supercritical fluid extraction (SFE). Thujopsene and cedrol showed excellent linearity in the range of 0.99–495.25, 0.61∼300.50 μg/ml and the limits of quantification were 0.2, 0.4 ng/ml, respectively. The method also showed good repeatability for quantification of thujopsene and cedrol with intra-day variations of 0.59 and 1.74 %, respectively, and inter-day variations of 0.99 and 3.06 %, respectively. The validated method was successfully applied to quantify thujopsene and cedrol in CWOs from T. sutchuenensis and P. orientalis. The analytical method can also be used to quantify thujopsene and cedrol in CWOs from other species of the family Cupressaceae.