Journal of Natural Sciences Research www.iiste.org ISSN 22243186 (Paper) ISSN 22250921 (Online) Vol.2, No.6, 2012 29 Biswapriya B. Misra 1, 2,* Satyahari Dey 1 1. Plant Biotechnology Laboratory, Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, WB, India 2. Centre for Chemical Biology, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 1st Floor, Block B, No.10, Persiaran Bukit Jambul, 11900 Bayan Lepas, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia * Email of the corresponding author: bbmirsraccb@gmail.com The East Indian sandalwood tree yields the costliest heartwood and essential oil that are used in traditional medicine, aromatherapy and in cosmetic and fragrance industries. Steam distillation is the traditional method employed for extraction of the sesquiterpenoid rich essential oil from chips of matured heartwood. However, there is no information available on the comparative extractability of sesquiterpenoids when different solvents are employed. Thus we used four different solvents to extract, detect and quantify fourteen major sesquiterpenoids from immature heartwood, by gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC MS) method employing an ion trap quadruple (ITQ) mass analyzer. Results suggest that, with increasing solvent polarity the diversity of sesquiterpenoids decreased, but the quantities of santalols increased. Moreover, nhexane remained the best extraction solvent for santalols, i.e., yielding up to 92.6 % of total sesquiterpenoids quantified. Furthermore, Zαtransbergamotol, Zepiβsantalol and Zβsantalols were found to be the most abundant constituents of immature heartwood. !"# GCMS, heartwood, , sesquiterpenoid, solvent $% L., the East Indian Sandalwood tree is a tropical woody member of Santalaceae. Sandalwood is the major source of costliest wood and essential oil extracted from it, a mixture of 90 % sesquiterpenoid alcohols, i.e., santalols. The heartwood of a 50 year old matured tree yields 2.5 6 % of essential oil upon steam distillation, and is influenced by several intrinsic and external factors. The global annual requirement is about 10,000 tons of wood, equivalence of 200 tons of oil, involving a trade of more than $ 360 million, of which only 10 % is met from natural sources. The use of sandalwood oil in fragrances in USA is estimated to be approximately 48,000 lbs. / year (Burdock and Carabin, 2008). Sandalwood oil finds numerous applications in traditional medicine system Ayurveda (Dikshit and Hussain, 1984) while the heartwood powder displays antiremorogenic, antiinflammatory, antimitotic, antihypertensive, antipyretic and sedative properties (Desai , 1991). Additionally, the santalols possess antiviral (Benencia and Courreges, 1999), anti (Takaishi , 2005) and anticancer (Bommareddy , 2012) properties. The yield of any essential oil varies depending on the age of the tree, color of heartwood, individual tree under study, location within the tree and the environment of growth of the tree. Traditionally, as an ageold practice the steam distillate of the heartwood is sold as marketable sandalwood essential oil. Major constituents of commercially available sandalwood oil are sesquiterpene alcohols like, α and βsantalols, bergamotols and several of their stereoisomers, whereas minor constituents includes lanceol, nuciferol, bisabolol and the sesquiterpene hydrocarbons such as αand βsantalenes, bergamotenes, α, β and γcurcumenes and βbisabolene (Adams , 1975; Christenson , 1981; Demole , 1976; Howes , 2004; Jones , 2006) and usually, αsantalol is more abundant (~46%) than βsantalol (~20%) (Anonis, 1998). Previous reports indicate that, there are quantitative and compositional differences in oils obtained from young and mature sandalwood trees and across heartwood sampled at different levels in the tree (Shankaranarayana and Parthasarathi, 1987). It is also noteworthy, that, yields of secondary metabolites depends on the intrinsic characteristics of plant material, environmental, and genetic aspects, or by extrinsic aspects such as extraction solvents used (Muzika , 2006). This investigation was undertaken with two objectives, i.e., it primarily focused on the identification, quantification of the numerous sesquiterpenoid constituents from immature heartwood samples using GC MS analyses and to show the differential extractability of sesquiterpenoid constituents by different solvents.