This volume focuses on plants yielding essential oils used as fragrance materials. It complements the Prosea volumes on edible fruits and nuts, medicinal and poisonous plants, spices, and plants producing exudates, which deal with plants that produce essential oils as important by-products. Fragrance materials play a much more important and varied role in life than is often realized. Recent advances in physico-chemical separation and analysis techniques have greatly extended the knowledge about the chemical composition of essential oils. Essential-oil plants are grown in nearly all latitudes, with tradition, labour costs and trade patterns being just as important as physical conditions and plant requirements. Like all Prosea publications, this volume is the result of the efforts of an international team of scientists, including botanists, agronomists, chemists and representatives of the perfumery industry.
Most of the 38 important crops covered in this volume are grown in South-East Asia, but several crops widely grown elsewhere and potentially useful in parts of South-East Asia have been included as well. A further 31 species of minor importance are treated briefly, while 400 species producing essential oils but having another primary use are listed.