Comparative Analysis of Chemical Compositions of Essential Oils from Fructus Evodiae

Fructus Evodiae is the dried nearly ripe fruit of Evodia rutaecarpa (Juss.) Benth., Evodia rutaecarpa (Juss.) Benth. var. officinalis (Dode) Huang or Evodia rutaecarpa (Juss.) Benth. var. bodinieri (Dode) Huang, is widely used in traditional Chinese medicine. It can be used to dispel cold and alleviate pain, to relieve vomiting, and diarrhea [1]. Recently, it has been reported that the essential oils from Fructus Evodiae exerts sedation, antibacterial, an antiproliferative effect on cancer [2,3]. In the present paper, a GC-MS method was validated by analyzing eight batches of samples including the dried nearly ripe fruit of Evodia rutaecarpa (Juss.) Benth. var. officinalis (Dode) Huang, and E. rutaecarpa (Juss.) Benth. The results of this investigation show: (1) there are a lot of differences in components of essential oil from Fructus Evodiae samples, which were collected from different places or different origins, (2) the results of this investigation support the usage of the dried nearly ripe fruit of Evodia rutaecarpa (Juss.) Benth. var. officinalis (Dode) Huang as Fructus Evodiae, and Xinhuang, Hunan, China, Tongren, Guizhou, China as a genuine production area (3) that GC-MS analyses can not only be developed to distinguish the Fructus Evodiae samples collected from different places and different origins in detail, but also can be used for optimizing location where Fructus Evodiae has much higher bioactive constituents of essential oil. Acknowledgments: We thank the financial support from the 11th Five Years Key Programs for Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2006BAI09B02), Hunan Provincial Science & Technology Department Foundation of China (No. 2008SK3087) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 30973877). References: [1] Committee for the Pharmacopoeia of P.R. China. (2005) Pharmacopoeia of P.R. China, Part I. Beijing Chemical Industry Press. Beijing. [2] Information Center of Chinese Herbal Medicine, State Pharmaceutical Administration of China. (1986) Handbook of Active Constituents in Plant medicine. People's Medical Publishing House. Beijing. [3] Li DJ, Shao JL, et al. (2001) Lishi zhen Med Mater Med Res 12: 1123–1124.