Plant card
29 August 2017
Benoit Roger, Ph. D. If you have the chance to visit Morocco or Tunisia during spring, get away from urban centers and follow your nose, it will probably lead you near one of the many plantations of bigarade orange or bitter orange spread in all Maghreb. From march to april, these little trees dress up
Plant card
20 June 2017
Alexis St-Gelais, M. Sc., chimiste Mandarin fruit (Citrus nobilis) essential oil is an aromatic delicacy. By experience, we observe that it regularly is either adulterated or confused with other citruses. Chemically, there are a few good keypoints to look for that will tell if a mandarin oil is genuine. We also provide an annotated typical
Popularization
12 June 2017
Alexis St-Gelais, chimiste Essential oils are worth quite a lot of money. It so happens that, in order to boost profits, unscrupulous people alter oils in various ways. This “Adulterants and you” series is there to introduce you to some of the adulterations we encounter. This is because not all of them are necessarily obvious,
Research notes
5 June 2017
Hubert Marceau, Chimiste, B. Sc. Agarwood is an oil with a very specific odor profile. Almost no two oils will have the same exact smell: sometimes it is leathery, other time smoky, some even have fruity notes and other lots can smell a bit cheesy. The reason for that come from how it is produced. Agarwood is
Essential Oil Card
30 May 2017
Bergamot oil is cold pressed from peels of Citrus aurantium ssp. bergamia fruits. Main compounds found in bergamot are limonene, linalool and linalyl acetate. Common adulteration of this oil is made by adding synthetic linalool and/or synthetic linalyl acetate. This can be easily detected with GC-MS analysis. Cold pressed bergamot oil is known to be