Chemical Properties
Indian lemongrass oil is obtained from the so-called Indian variety of
lemongrass, Cymbopogon flexuosus (Nees ex Steud.) Stapf. The oil is
produced in a quantity of 200 t/yr, mainly in India and China . It is a pale
yellow to brownish-yellow oil.
d2020 0.885–0.905; n20D 1.4830–1.4890; α20D ?4 ° to +1 °; solubility: 1 vol in
max. 3 vol 70% ethanol; content byGC: 25–35% neral and 35–47% geranial.
The two oils were formerly the main source of natural citral, obtained
as about 4:1 mixture of geranial and neral by distillation.
However, lemongrass oil has declined in commercial importance due to the
competitive synthesis of citral and isolation of natural citral fromL. cubeba
oil. In addition to being processed into citral, it is used to some extent for
perfuming soap and household products.
Definition
Extractives and their physically modified derivatives such as tinctures, concretes, absolutes, essential oils, oleoresins, terpenes, terpene-free fractions, distillates, residues, etc., obtained from Cymbopogon flexuosus Poaceae.
Anticancer Research
The essential oil from C. flexuosus was tested on both solid and ascitic Ehrlich andSarcoma-180 tumor models in mice. This study indicate that the oil act on the apoptoticpathway resulting in a moderate antitumoral activities (Sharma et al. 2009).
