Discoveries
25 February 2019
Benoit Roger, Ph. D. & Alexis St-Gelais, M. Sc., Chemist Vetiver (Vetiveria zizanioides, syn. Chrysopogon zizanioides) is one of the essential oils we receive the most often for analysis. This is also one of the most complex oil to analyse as it contains almost only sesquiterpenoids among which a lot of unknown compounds with poor
Popularization
26 January 2019
Popularization – Alexis St-Gelais, M. Sc., chimiste Analysis reports for essential oils profiles most often report some total of the compounds identifications. In our reports, as in scientific literature, the total almost never makes it to 100%. However, many other testing laboratories consistently report that they identified 100% of their oils in routine. How is
Plant profiles
8 January 2019
Sylvain Mercier, M. Sc., chimiste At PhytoChemia, we always like to seek around us to find interesting plants to distill. This summer, we performed several distillations of different plants. You will find in this blog post a summary of our 2018 summer distillations along with the general composition of essential oils that we obtained, their
Popularization
20 November 2018
Alexis St-Gelais, M. Sc., chimiste – Popularization Agarwood: one of the most prized, rare, and exotic essential oils. We have discussed on these pages earlier the most common problem encountered with this material on the market, that is, serial dilutions with carriers. But what is to be expected into agarwood oil itself? There have been
Activities and Events
21 September 2018
Laurie Caron, M.Sc. Chimiste In collaboration with Biopterre, the Institut de Recherche en Biologie Végétale and the University of Moncton, Phytochemia is proud to present a new research project on the identification of the pests ans diseases affecting the production of cannabis and hemp in Canada. The main objective of this project is to generate the
Research notes
4 September 2018
Here is the lecture that we have presented at Botanica 2018 : The aromatherapy industry interest in hydrosol has been growing in the recent years. As more practionners and enthousiast try to include them into their regiment, it gets more and more important to know their chemicals composition. Sadly, hydrosol did not get the same
Essential Oil Card
3 July 2018
By Benoit Roger, Ph. D. Always looking for a deeper knowledge of our surrounding plants, we recently distilled eastern teaberry or American wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens) freshly harvested in our local boreal forest (Saguenay, QC, Canada). Leafs of wintergreen and beginning of the distillation The crushed leaves of eastern teaberry has an odor that is
Popularization
19 June 2018
Alexis St-Gelais, M. Sc., chimiste – Popularization Quality control of essential oils is an important issue in the worlds of flavour & fragrances and aromatherapy. But most of the time, these oils are not used pure. It is in fact recommended to dilute them prior to use, and a logical and popular solution to that
Summary of articles
5 June 2018
Sylvain Mercier, M. Sc., Chemist If you have already been interested in the anti-mosquito action of essential oils, you probably already know the potential effectiveness of citronella as a repellent against these insects that disturb our beautiful summer evenings. Different insects can be vectors of serious diseases such as Aedes sp. which carries dengue or
Popularization
17 May 2018