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Organic Certification is Not Enough: The Case of the Methoxydecane Frankincense

Frankincense, the oleo-gum-resin of Boswellia trees, has been an important religious and medicinal element for thousands of years, and today is used extensively for essential oils. One of the most popular frankincense species is Boswellia sacra Flueck. (syn. Boswellia carteri Birdw.) from Somalia an...

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Autores principales: Johnson, Stephen, DeCarlo, Anjanette, Satyal, Prabodh, Dosoky, Noura S., Sorensen, Aaron, Setzer, William N.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6524464/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30987305
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants8040088
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author Johnson, Stephen
DeCarlo, Anjanette
Satyal, Prabodh
Dosoky, Noura S.
Sorensen, Aaron
Setzer, William N.
author_facet Johnson, Stephen
DeCarlo, Anjanette
Satyal, Prabodh
Dosoky, Noura S.
Sorensen, Aaron
Setzer, William N.
author_sort Johnson, Stephen
collection PubMed
description Frankincense, the oleo-gum-resin of Boswellia trees, has been an important religious and medicinal element for thousands of years, and today is used extensively for essential oils. One of the most popular frankincense species is Boswellia sacra Flueck. (syn. Boswellia carteri Birdw.) from Somalia and Somaliland. Recent increases in demand have led to many areas being overharvested, emphasizing the need for incentives and monitoring for sustainable harvesting, such as certification schemes. Concurrently, a new chemical component, called methoxydecane, has emerged in oils claimed to be B. carteri, suggesting the possibility of a chemical marker of overharvesting or other stress that could aid in monitoring. To find the source of this new chemical component, we sampled resin directly from trees in areas producing the new methoxydecane chemotype. This revealed that methoxydecane comes not from Boswellia carteri, but from a newly described frankincense species, Boswellia occulta. The presence of Boswellia occulta oil in essential oil sold as pure B. carteri, including certified organic oil, emphasizes the current lack of traceability in the supply chain and the ineffectiveness of organic certification to secure purity and sustainable harvesting in wildcrafted species.
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spelling pubmed-65244642019-06-05 Organic Certification is Not Enough: The Case of the Methoxydecane Frankincense Johnson, Stephen DeCarlo, Anjanette Satyal, Prabodh Dosoky, Noura S. Sorensen, Aaron Setzer, William N. Plants (Basel) Article Frankincense, the oleo-gum-resin of Boswellia trees, has been an important religious and medicinal element for thousands of years, and today is used extensively for essential oils. One of the most popular frankincense species is Boswellia sacra Flueck. (syn. Boswellia carteri Birdw.) from Somalia and Somaliland. Recent increases in demand have led to many areas being overharvested, emphasizing the need for incentives and monitoring for sustainable harvesting, such as certification schemes. Concurrently, a new chemical component, called methoxydecane, has emerged in oils claimed to be B. carteri, suggesting the possibility of a chemical marker of overharvesting or other stress that could aid in monitoring. To find the source of this new chemical component, we sampled resin directly from trees in areas producing the new methoxydecane chemotype. This revealed that methoxydecane comes not from Boswellia carteri, but from a newly described frankincense species, Boswellia occulta. The presence of Boswellia occulta oil in essential oil sold as pure B. carteri, including certified organic oil, emphasizes the current lack of traceability in the supply chain and the ineffectiveness of organic certification to secure purity and sustainable harvesting in wildcrafted species. MDPI 2019-04-04 /pmc/articles/PMC6524464/ /pubmed/30987305 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants8040088 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Johnson, Stephen
DeCarlo, Anjanette
Satyal, Prabodh
Dosoky, Noura S.
Sorensen, Aaron
Setzer, William N.
Organic Certification is Not Enough: The Case of the Methoxydecane Frankincense
title Organic Certification is Not Enough: The Case of the Methoxydecane Frankincense
title_full Organic Certification is Not Enough: The Case of the Methoxydecane Frankincense
title_fullStr Organic Certification is Not Enough: The Case of the Methoxydecane Frankincense
title_full_unstemmed Organic Certification is Not Enough: The Case of the Methoxydecane Frankincense
title_short Organic Certification is Not Enough: The Case of the Methoxydecane Frankincense
title_sort organic certification is not enough: the case of the methoxydecane frankincense
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6524464/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30987305
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants8040088
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