EXTRACTION OF ESSENTIAL OIL FROM MURRAYA KOENIGII LEAVES: POTENTIAL STUDY FOR APPLICATION AS NATURAL-BASED INSECT REPELLENT

Murraya Koenigii leaves contain many useful chemical constituents. The leaves which known as daun kari in Malaysia is belong to family Rutaceace and can be found in Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Burma. The aim of this study is to characterize the components of essential oil of the leaves and finding its potential to be applied as insect repellent. The essential oil was extracted using steam distillation and hydro-distillation. The amount of leaves and water used were 200 gram and 2 mL. The time of extraction for both methods were between 3 to 9 hours. For every hour of extraction time, the yield between these two methods were compared. The results shows that the percentage yield for steam distillation in method is higher compared to conventional method which is hydro-distillation method. The highest yield obtained from 9 hours steam distillation is 0.25% (w/w) whereby 9 hours hydro-distillation method can only collected 0.09% (w/w) of yield. Components identification of the essential oil performed by GC-MS detected the presence of 30 different components, majorly hydrocarbons. The analysis reported the existence of α-pinene and Caryophyllene which are the active ingredients for insect repellent. Based on this study, the present of these two repellent activity compounds in the extracted essential oil proves its potential to be used as active ingredients in natural-based insect repellent. The repellency test towards Blattaria shows 100% repellency.