Chemical Constituents and Antimicrobial Activity of Essential Oil and Extracts of Heartwood of Aquilaria crassna Obtained from Water Distillation and Supercritical Fluid Carbon Dioxide Extraction

Agarwood (Aquilaria crassna) is a high value economic plant. Agarwood oil is widely used among various countries as perfumes and ingredient in medical recipes. In this study, the extraction of dried Agarwood powder by water distillation (WD), supercritical fluid carbon dioxide extraction (SFE) and SFE with ethanol as cosolvent (SFE+co) gave 0.2% oil, 0.06% and 0.014% extracts, respectively. The types of chemical constituents of oil and extracts from these 3 extraction methods were quite similar. The major chemical constituents of WD oil, SFE and SFE+co extracts were γ-selinene (13.66%), selina-4,11-dien-14-al (14.25%) and selina-4,11-dien-14-al (13.39%), respectively. The WD oil, SFE and SFE+co extracts had antimicrobial activities against S. aurues and C. albicans, but were not sensitive to E. coli at maximum concentration of the study, 2mg/mL.