Estudio Fitoquímico del Aceite Esencial de Ocotea Quixos (LAM.) Kosterm. (ISHPINGO)

This research was conducted with a sample of leaves and calyxes of Ocotea quixos (Lam.) Kosterm. collected in Archidona, Napo province, Ecuador. Although the literature reports the calyxes of the tree as the part of the plant traditionally used for the extraction of the essential oil, there is no data on the chemical composition of the essential oil extracted from the leaves. The objective of this work was to extract the essential oil from leaves and calyxes for a comparative study of their physical properties, chemical composition and antimicrobial properties. The residual moisture content in leaves and calyxes was 8 and 12 %, respectively. The results of the phytochemical screening performed on the aqueous and alcoholic extracts of leaves and calyxes allowed the identification of saponins, reducing sugars, phenols and tannins, and flavonoids. The extraction of the essential oil was carried out by hydrodistillation, the yield was 1.24 % in calyxes after 2 hours of distillation and 0.88 % in the case of leaves. The gas chromatographic analysis of the essential oil of calyxes revealed the presence of two important peaks with retention times of 12.213 and 13.718 minutes; while in the essential oil of leaves two important peaks were also observed with a slight variation in their retention times: 12.117 and 13.677 minutes, it was assumed that from the qualitative point of view, the two parts of the plant material analyzed present a very similar composition.