Extremely complex composition (+100 components),
excellent fixative properties, amber brown and viscous liquid, perfect
solubility to combine with others, one of the finest work of Mother Earth.
It is easy to say some impressive words about Vetiver oil once you smell that beauty, if you know her story, I assure you would be in
love with her in the first sight/sniff.
Let’s start with some impressive features of
vetiver plant, the aromatic verdancy, the fragrant rootiness, the subtle and
refreshing citrusiness, the enjoyable earthiness, a wonderful hint of
woodiness, and a certain Guerlainesque leathery-ambery darkness in the drydown.
 |
| Smell is from heaven, roots are in the Earth. |
Scent of Vetiver oil is like a Symphony written
by the Nature. It has a lot of strong accords such as Earthy, Citrusy,
Woody, Balsamic, Herbal and Aromatic that are really hard to combine, yet with
a great harmony like in an Orchestra.
OK. Lets start our story with the plant.
VETIVER
Botanical Name; Chrysopogon zizanioides, Vetiveria zizanioides
Family; Poaceaea
Common Name; Vetiver, Khus, KhusKhus, Cuscus
It is a perennial bunchgrass.
The plant is native to India, but is also cultivated in many tropical regions of the world
including Indonesia, Haiti and China
Vetiver
looks like Citronella, Lemongrass or Litsea Cubeba (all have busy green leaves,
and green, citrusy and citral type odor) but Vetiver is waaaay different than
them as a plant and odor.
Plant is
kinda tall 1.00-2.00 mt. and leaves are linear, erect, grassy and narrow 0.6-1
cm.
We have to talk about Vetiver Roots separately.
Vetiver has strong, fibrous, binding roots.
Roots have aromatic properties and grow 4-6 mt deep.
Yes.. 4 to 6 meters down to the earth!!
Also tremendous diversity exists in root system with respect to pattern of growth, orientation and thickness of roots, as well as for occurrence of secondary roots.
Root system is amazingly structured and very strong.
Roots can grow upto 3-4 mt in a year.
What an impatience nomad J
Quite impressive you think right? Keep on reading
please..
Let me tell you how strong and useful that psychopath plant is;
- The
plant can be grown over a very wide range of climatic and soil conditions,
and if planted correctly, it can be used virtually anywhere
under tropical, semi-tropical, and Mediterranean climates. It has
characteristics that are totally unique to a single species.
- Resistant
to a wide range of pH tolerance from about pH
3 to pH 11.
- A
high tolerance to most heavy metals, vetiver has an ability to remove from soil
and water large quantities of excess nitrates,
phosphates and farm chemicals!!
- Thanks
to its loooong and strong root system, it can persists deep water flow. Vetiver
can survive up to two months under clear water. Attention lads&gents, under water!!
- Shoots
(sprout) growing from the underground crown so that the plant has a great
resistance against FROST & FIRE! Can you die or not?
- This
unique sprouting system allows Vetiver to tolerate extreme temperature, traffic
and heavy grazing pressure.
- Vetiver
grass is not affected to any significant extent by pesticides and diseases, nor
does it act as a host for pests or diseases that might attack crop or garden
plants..
Leave it
be, this beauty is indestructible J
You think that Vetiver is giving its oil only,
right? Well, you are wrong.
With these properties and characteristics above,
Vetiver plant is used in many areas
for different purposes and it is very important for many different fields.
I will not enter to these fields with long
explanation since I would like to jump into OIL part but I must give you some
headlines of these fields at least, to show some respect to Vetiver.
Some usage areas of Vetiver Plant;
- Agriculture
- Water
conservation
- Construction
site stabilization
- Pollution
control (constructed welands)
- Reducing
Soil Erosion
- Treatment
of Waste Water
- Producing
an Essential Oil (perfumery, medical applications, flavoring applications, food
& beverages, cosmetic and soaps)
- Make
Bio-mass
- Thatching
and Weaving
Vetiver is the gifts of mother earth
to humankind.
That’s for sure!
"It's a miracle plant, You dig
it up, cut off the roots, plant it right back and it produces again next year.
It needs no irrigation or fertilizer."
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| Add caption |
VETIVER OIL
Now fun part! Here we go. J
Vetiver oil
is an amber to grayish
brown, olive brown or dark brown viscous liquid with an odor that is sweet and very
heavy woody-earthy, reminiscent of roots and wet soil, with a rich
undertone of precious wood notes.
PRODUCTION
Vetiver oil
is obtained from roots of vetiver
grass by steam distillation and
hydro distillation.
Vetiver roots
have an oil yield between 1 and 3%.
Let’s have a
look at the process of cultivation à distillation step
by step.
First the roots are dug up carefully.
Than cleaned and dried.
Then the roots are chopped and soaked in water
before sending them to
distillation.
Now we are ready for distillation.
The distillation is undertaken
near the place of harvesting.
Distillation process can take
up to 24 hours.
The
air is bitter, becoming intense where the cloudy oil flows into barrels and
before it is filtered by centrifuge into an amber-colored oil.
PERFUMERY WORLD
Vetiver oil is very persistent and one of the finest
fixatives available to perfumers.
Its complex chemical composition and oil odor,
as well as its high solubility in alcohol which improves its miscibility with other
perfumery materials, makes it a unique
and valuable perfumery resource.
Vetiver is a more common ingredient in fragrances for men.
It is the main ingredient
for more than 36% of all Western-quality perfumes and 20% of all men's fragrances in the
world.
Vetiver oil is used not only as a fixative, but also as an odor
contributor in bases such as fougère, chypre, modern woody-aldehydic or
amberaldehydic bases, oriental bases, moss and woody notes, opoponax bases,
rose bases, and so on.
A few
fragrance companies have used vetiver oil as their prominent middle note, marketing these vetiver perfumes as
masculine scents.
It is also a
flavoring agent in beverages, sorbets and other foodstuffs.
A 15–30% solution of vetiver oil in
alcohol is enough to make a true vetiver
perfume, and its further dilutions have value as vetiver eau de cologne and
eau de toilette.
In addition
to its direct perfumery applications, vetiver oil in its diluted form is extensively used in aftershave lotions, air
fresheners and bath products, as well as flavoring syrups, ice cream, cosmetics
and food preservation.
The result is incredible
The majority of the world’s
perfumes contain this oil. Around 90% !!!
MARKET
Total annual production
of Vetiver Oil is around 250 MT.
Haiti is the main
producer in the world with around 100 MT of production, followed by Indonesia
with 80 MT.
China (20 MT), India (20 MT), Brazil (15 MT), Dominican Republic (12 MT) are also have their share in
total production. Vietnam
(3 MT), Madagascar
(2 MT), Reunion
(500 kg) and Nepal
with 500 kg of production are adding their names into producers list.
Total value
of Vetiver Oil market in 2018 is around 22M
$.
Attention,
it is only for Vetiver Oil market value.
TECNIC and SPECS
Well, here we
are in the best (the most boring for some) part.
We will dive
into Vetiver Oil and check what’s going on there.
For starting
I must warn you guys, Vetiver Oil is one of the most complex and
enigmatic oils known.
If you are
still here, let’s go!
Chemical
composition of vetiver oil is extremely complex. It has more than 100
identified constituents and guessed over 300
compounds consist of mainly sesquiterpenes and sesquiterpene derivatives, of which vetiverols, their carbonyl
compounds and esters are the main constituents.
In the chart
you can see main components with their contents in the oil due to their origin.
COMPONENT
|
HAITI
ORIGIN content
|
JAVA
ORIGIN content
|
khusimol
|
9-15%
|
6-11%
|
β-vetivone
|
2-4%
|
2-4%
|
α-vetivone
|
2-5%
|
2-4%
|
khusimene
|
||
khusimone
|
||
β-vetispirene
|
||
γ-selinene
|
||
δ-cadinene
|
||
vetivene
|
||
terpinen-4-ol
|
||
benzoic acid
|
||
Sum
of Alcohol
|
70-80%
|
50-70%
|
Sum
of terpenes
|
20-30%
|
30-50%
|
Khusimone though found in
small amounts in the oil, is the main molecule that provides the characteristic
odor for vetiver.
α-Vetivone has a warm pleasant powerful odor
β-vetivone has a quinolinelike, fruity (cassis, grapefruit)
aroma with a woody by-note.
β-Vetivone also offers a
quinolinelike, fruity aroma with a woody by-note,
2-methoxy-3-isopropylpyrazine is considered as
the source of green notes with other pyrazines that have been identified in
vetiver oil.
Besides
Vetiver Oil, we have to mention about alcohol
derivatives of Vetiver
Oil. Vetiverol
is easy to separate by fractional distillation thanks to its clear-cut differences in boiling point.
Also,
vetiverol could be acetylated with acetic anhydride to
produce Vetiveryl Acetate.
Both
vetiverols and acetates have softer odors and fixative qualities, and are used
as blender with high-class perfumery
products
Fragrance
manufacturers generally prefer vetiver oil from Haiti. They appreciate the high purity of Haitian oil and the high
concentrations of alpha and beta vetivones in comparison to, for example, Indian oil. These
vetivones play a crucial role in the
smell of the oil.
Vetiver oil needs hard
labor-force and the oil is really expensive to produce.
500 bales equals to 600 kg of Vetiver roots to fill 20-foot stills, which will produce 4 kg of oil once it is harvested.
Using this system, five
farmers working for about 15 days to complete the process.
Means that
125 workers work 1 month to produce 1 drum of Vetiver Oil (200 kg) !!
SUMMARY
Vetiver plant is such a
gift from Mother Nature. It is used for many
application which are essentials for many industries including health, beauty,
cosmetic, soil erosion, wellness, food and beverages etc.
50% of the world’s vetiver
supply comes from Haiti in where living
conditions are the worst in the hemisphere, and with many families earning
barely $2 a day, roughly 30.000-60.000 farmers rely on vetiver
roots as their primary source of income.
On-going effects from annual hurricanes and corrupt governments have
created cumulative hardship for the population body, which results in wide-spread deforestation as
over 90% of Haitians are reliant on biomass (primarily wood-based charcoal) for
cooking fuel, cutting up to
12 million trees annually for the purpose.
The real owners of this fame comes from
this beauty belongs to farmers who are putting their presents and future on it.
We must give the
real value back to real owners!
Please!
FAIR TRADE
FAIR TRADE
FAIR TRADE !!!
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