Mango Essential Oil in the Food Industry

1. Background of study

Mango is one of the tropical fruits that grow seasonally. It has unique fragrance and flavor and often labeled as super fruit (Mounica & Subbiah, 2014). It is the most sowed fruit with over 2,000 varieties and natively found in India. Great numbers of varieties are differing with respect to crop, pulp, colour of skin, flavor and aroma of the fruit. Therefore, it become one of the most popular tropical fruit in Southeast Asia (Fernando, Peréz-Sariñana Bianca, Sergio, Eapen, & Sebastian, 2014). Mango also become the national fruit for India and national tree for Bangladesh (bdnews24.com, 2010). Mango is scientifically known as Mangifera with diverse species under family of Anacardiaceae (Softusvista, 2015). It has 69 species with Mangifera as one of the genus. Examples of Mangifera species are Mangifera indica which is the common mango, Mangifera foetida (bacang or machang) and Mangifera odorata (kuini). The highest number of Mangifera species is cultivated in Asia where Malaysia, Borneo and Sumatra have the highest number of species of Mangifera (Morton, 1987). There is hundreds of Mangifera cultivar and it is cultivated in warm and subtropical country such as India. The cultivation of Mangifera must be propagated and it often crossed to improve pollination (Allen, 2006).

Mangifera cultivar is Mangifera indica species that is planted from variety of sources such as seed or bulb of plant and sometimes been called by other name. There are many Mangifera indica cultivar in Malaysia such as Mangifera indica cultivar Lemak Manis and Mangifera indica cultivar Mas Hitam. Mangifera  species is differentiated by its aroma. It shows that each Mangifera species has different aroma where the aroma of Mangifera may give different major chemical constituent. The Mangifera species is hardly found around the year and it can be season fruit such as Mangifera foetida mostly fruiting around March to April after drought season (Litz, 2009). There are many scientific researches on essential oil of mango and it gives different results depending on the varieties and species of mango. Previous reported that Green Thai Mangifera indica cultivar Khieo Sawoei has distinctive odor which calculated by odor unit value (U_o). it shows that the odor is cause by high percentage of 2,4-decadienal in its peel and hexanal in its pulp (Tamura, Boonbumrung, Yoshizawa, & Varanyanond, 2001). Another report verified the presence of terpenes hydrocarbons in yellow-red colour of 20 cultivars Mangifera indica L. (Pino, Mesa, Munoz, Pilar-Marti, & Marbot, 2005). The natural oil used can be essential oil which is essential oil that has fragrance and usually extracted from plants for soothing and healing and cosmetic proposes (Press, 2015). Essential oil is usually used for aromatherapy where it helps physical well-being and psychology of person. Aromatherapy is the practice of using the natural oil that is extracted from plants flower, peel, pulp, bark leaves or roots. It is an alternative method for healing purpose and promotes health properties (Aromatherapy.com, 2010).

Aromatherapy can be used by any method such as inhalation, massage or water immersion to stimulate response (Department of Health & Human Services, 2015).

It is said that some essential oil shows some anti-microbial activity, antiviral, antioxidants and anti-diabetic agents. It also demonstrate some potency against bacterial, fungal and viral infections (Edris, 2007).

There are many types of extraction method to extract the essential oil from plants especially. It can be distillation method or expression method. The most common method is distillation method where it consist of many types of distillation which are water distillation, water and steam distillation and steam distillation. The extraction method used in his project is water distillation method or hydro-distillation method (BetterHealth, 1999). Medical fields today have developed many kinds of drugs medicine to cure various types of diseases such as paracetamol to reduce fever and acetylcysteine to loosen thick mucus (Drugs.com, 2015). Alternative medicine has become popular as diseases treatment.Example of alternative medicine is acupuncture, homeopathy and aromatherapy (Sampson, 1995). The gist in this project is to elevate aromatherapy as alternative medicine and for flavoring.

1.2 Problem Statement

Mangifera indica species and its cultivars have different aroma and they may have different chemical constituent for each cultivar. However, only small number of different cultivar has been studied with respect to its chemical constituent. Previous reports on extraction of essential oil in Mangifera cultivar such as M.indica cultivar Chokanan, M.indica cultivar Falan and M.indica cultivar Water Lily was reported in Malaysia. Some authors stated that chemical constituents of essential oil from Mangifera may have terpenes hydrocarbon and alpha-caryophyllene but it might have different chemical constituent for ripe fruit with green peel and yellow pulp of Mangifera cultivar found in Malaysia. In past study, the Green Thai Khoei Sawoi has shown γ-terpinene and β-ocimene as major chemical constituents for ripe fruit with green peel (Tamura et al., 2001). However the major compound is different when it is a ripe fruit with yellow peel. The peel essential oil from yellow Mangifera indica cultivar Zebdeya, Hindi and Cobaneya shows different major compound which are σ-3-carene, α-terpinolene and caryophyllene (El-Hawary & Rabeh, 2014). Therefore the present study focus on comparison of chemical constituent of volatile oil between different Mangifera indica cultivar and other Mangifera species with green peel found in Malaysia which are M. indica cultivar Chokanan, M. indica cultivar Falan, M. indica cultivar King, M. indica cultivar Lemak Manis, M. indica cultivar Mas Hitam, and Mangifera odorata.

1.3 Significance of Study

Mangoes have a lot of aromatic components that can be extracted using hydro-distillation method. Besides contributing to the body of knowledge, the essential oil of mango in this project can contribute to flavor. This study is beneficial in food processed industry where fruit flavor has become important quality that influence consumer acceptance. Different variety of essential oil from Mangifera species can also be commercialized for its aromatherapy purposes. They have different major chemical constituent in it let alone from its peel or pulp.