Essential oils are largely consumed as they are beneficial to humans as natural remedies and also for biomedical, cosmetic, food, veterinary, and agriculture applications. Litsea which includes around 200 species, is an important genus of the Lauraceae family due to its production of secondary compounds. It comprises several species and can serve as valuable medicinal plants, because of their biological and pharmacological properties. It has been used for a long time in traditional Chinese medicine for the treatment of diarrhea, stomachache, dyspepsia, gastroenteritis, diabetes, edema, cold, arthritis, asthma, pain, and traumatic injury. Litsea essential oils have been studied for their chemical compositions and biological activities. The present review is an attempt to collect and document the recent studies on essential oils of the genus Litsea. Information on the Litsea species was collected via electronic search (using Pubmed, SciFinder, Scopus, Google Scholar and Web of Science) a.....

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The purposes of the study were to analyse the essential oils composition, phytochemicals, and antioxidant activity of selected species of the genus Litsea (L. costalis, L. machilifolia and L. globularia), Beilschmiedia (B. kunstleri, B. insignis and B. pahangensis) and Cryptocarya (C. impressa, C. infectoria and C. rugulosa) from Lauraceae family. The essential oils were obtained via hydrodistillation technique and their chemical compositions were determined by gas chromatography (GC-FID) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The phytochemicals were obtained using chromatography techniques and their structures were confirmed by spectroscopic analysis and comparison with literature. The antioxidant activity of the essential oils and extracts was determined using DPPH free radical scavenging assay. The study showed that the major components of L. costalis, L. machilifolia and L. globularia essential oils were β-caryophyllene (12.6%), β-sesquiphellandrene (29.5%).....

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