Chemical Characterisation Of The Volatile Constituents Of Essential Oil From Commiphora Wildii (Omumbiri) Resin

ABSTRACT

Commiphora wildii (Omumbiri), a member of the Burseraceae family, is the most important resin‒producing plant used by Himba women for perfume. The Opuwo Processing Facility (OPF) is currently producing Omumbiri essential oil which they supply to companies in Namibia, South Africa, Germany and France. However, most of their products are sold in Southern Africa, and supply outweighs the demand. OPF is currently working on improving the reproducibility of production of the oil to make it more suitable for the export market, since for the international cosmetics and food industries, batch‒to‒batch variation in oil composition is unfavourable. It was discovered that oil produced from mature resin has a more desirable fragrance. An interest arose in what the differences in the chemical composition between oil produced from freshly exuded and mature resin may be. In this study the chemical characterisation of the volatile constituents of the essential oil produced from fresh and mature Commiphora wildii resin was performed using gas chromatography and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. In addition, the chemical profiles of a series of essential oil batches produced by OPF were compared to determine their batch-to-batch reproducibility. A total of 50 volatile compounds (mostly terpenoids) were tentatively identified based on their mass spectra and retention index data. The identities of 7 of these volatile constituents were confirmed by retention time comparison with authentic reference standards. The composition of all the essential oil batches of C. wildii from different conservancies produced by the OPF were comparable to a reference batch of oil produced from fresh resin.