68915-32-2

pale yellow powder with an extremely bitter taste. One of the bitter components is quasin (C??H??O??), which forms flaky crystals in dilute methanol. It has a melting point of 222°C and a bitterness threshold of 1:60,000. Commercially available quasin is about 60 times more bitter than quinine. It can be found in the Jamaican bitter tree (Picrasma excelsa) found in Jamaica, the quassia tree (Quassia amara) found in Brazil, and the bark of Simaroubaceae plants found in Colombia, Panama, and the West Indies.

Extractives and their physically modified derivatives such as tinctures, concretes, absolutes, essential oils, oleoresins, terpenes, terpene-free fractions, distillates, residues, etc., obtained from Quassia, Simaroubaceae.

The extract contains complex terpenoid compounds called quassinoids.