Aromatic essential oils play a significant role in pharmaceuticals, food additives, cosmetics, and perfumery. Essential oils mostly comprise aliphatic hydrocarbons, monoterpenoids, sesquiterpenoids and diterpenes. Plant extracts comprise a complex mixture of terpenes, terpenoids, aliphatic and phenol-derived aromatic components. Terpenes are a significant class of hydrocarbons with numerous health benefits. Monoterpenes are the most important constituents of essential oils. α-phellandrene (α-PHE) is a cyclic monoterpene with two double bonds in a heterocyclic ring (endocyclic).
1. Introduction
Plant-based medicines are playing a vivid role in health care. Plant-derived essential oils are one of the prominent sources of bioactive molecules, including volatile lipophilic compounds with strong aromas. Essential oils are composed of hydrocarbons and their derivatives, such as alcohols, acids, esters, aldehydes, ketones, amines, nitrogen and sulfur compounds, oxygenated terpenes, terpenoid hydrocarbons and sesquiterpenes
[1,2][1][2]. Essential oils are isolated from plants through various distillation processes, such as hydro and steam distillation, effleurage, maceration, supercritical, microwave-assisted, and solvent extractions
[1]. Other chromatographic techniques, such as column, thin layer, high-pressure liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry (MS), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS), liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry, and Fourier-transform infrared spectrophotometry were also used in the characterization and identification of compounds in the essential oils
[1].
Monoterpenes are the most important constituents of essential oils. α-phellandrene (α-PHE) is a cyclic monoterpene with two double bonds in a heterocyclic ring (endocyclic)
[3]. It was named after
Eucalyptus phellandra (E. phellandra), the plant from where α-PHE was first isolated. α-PHE is a natural plant-derived compound with various medicinal properties, found useful in the pharmaceutical, food, cosmetic and perfume industries
[4,5][4][5]. Phellandrene (PHE) compounds are prevalently used in fragrances
[6]. PHE is found in plants, such as Angelica and Eucalyptus, and due to its pleasant scent, it has been used in fragrances
[7].
E. microtheca,
E. viminalis, and
E. dives primarily emit α-PHE into the atmosphere, and the α-PHE produces particle nucleation due to monoterpene oxidation, observed over Eucalypt forests
[8,9][8][9]. In the indoor environment, α-PHE is used in cleansing products, detergents, and room fresheners
[10]. α-PHE interacts with the local environment when it is emitted. α-PHE is an important component for ozonolysis and produces a significant, blue-colored haze due to nocturnal nucleation over the Eucalypt forests
[11].
2. Properties of Phellandrene
Phellandrenes comprise alpha-phellandrene (α-PHE) and beta-phellandrene (β-PHE), prominently found in eucalyptus plant species. PHEs are also present in other plants, such as mint, black pepper, parsley, cinnamon, lavender, pine, ginger grass, water fennel, and dill
[13][12]. PHEs are herbaceous with different aromas, which have been known for their anti-fungal
[14][13], anti-inflammatory, anti-hyperalgesic, anti-depressant
[15][14], analgesic
[16][15] and anti-cancer activity
[17,18][16][17]. Plant-derived secondary metabolites comprise different active components, most prevalently, terpenes, alkaloids, and phenolic compounds
[19][18]. The compounds are extracted from the medicinal plants via various methods, which yield a complex liquid mixture of chemicals, including terpenes, terpenoids, aliphatic and aromatic compounds and characteristic volatile properties, and are mostly lipophilic
[4,16][4][15]. The monoterpene α-PHE is one of the predominant constituents of many plant species. The list of the representative plant species containing α-PHE is summarized in
Table 1, and pictures of the few representative plant species are displayed in
Figure 1.
Figure 1. The pictures of the few representative plant species reported to have α-phellandrene [38]. The pictures of the few representative plant species reported to have α-phellandrene [19].
Table 1.
The list of representative plant species that are reported to have α-Phellandrene.