Essential Oil Yield and Quality of Citronella (Cymbopogon nardus L.) Distillation at Various Harvest Ages and Chopping Material

Abstract

Indonesia is one of the largest essential oils producing countries in the world. These oils are obtained from various plants such as patchouli, vetiver, nutmeg, cloves, and citronella and have the potential to be exported. This research aims to examine the effect of harvest age and material chopping on the yield and quality of citronella oil. The material used was citronella leaves obtained from the farmer located in Karacak village, Leuwiliang subdistrict, Bogor, Indonesia. A total of 3 kg of citronella leaves for each treatment were aerated for 24 hours before the distillation process. The treatments applied were harvest age (1.5 months, 2 months and 3 months) and material pre-treatment (chopping and without chopping). Distillation was carried out for 4 hours from the time the distillate comes out of the condenser. A completely randomized factorial design with two factors was used in this research. First factor was harvest age and the second factor was material chopping. The results of the research showed that the harvest age and chopping material had a significant effect on the yield, but did not have a significant effect on the quality of citronella oil. The best results were obtained from the 3 month harvest age with the chopping material resulting in oil yield of 1.08%, density of 0.907 g/cm3, refractive index of 1.467 with citronellal content of 38.82% and geraniol content of 21.49%.