Davana Oil (FEMA# 2359; CAS# 8016-03-3) is obtained by selective steam rectification of an essential oil from the plant Artemisia pallens (Walls ex. DC, Family: Asteraceae). The oil has a brown viscous consistency with  a characteristic fruity smell associated with ‘plum jam’ and is used in various fragrance and flavour applications. Some describe it with a light rum accent with fig and prune dried notes. The volatile components were found to contain a series of mono-, sesqui- and furanoterpenoids (Baslas, 1971; Thomas and Pitton, 1971; Misra et al., 1991) including 11-hydroxy-8-oxo-9,10-dehydro-10,11-dihydronerolidol which is believed to be a precursor for the furano-sequiterpenes.

The Davana (a.k.a. Davanamu) is a small, aromatic herbaceous from the humid plains of  India. A couple of novel germacranolides have been isolated from the plant’s aerial parts (Rojatkar et al., 1996; Pujar et al., 2000). A couple of eudesmanolides, pallensin and 4-epipallensin have been recently isolated (Ruikar et al., 2011). A methanolic extract (50% v/v) from the whole plant has shown antibacterial activity against Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Shigella flexneri when present at 100mg/ml (Elango et al., 2009) which is believed to be due to the presence of arbutin.

If anyone has more knowledge about the plant and its oil I’d be interested to hear from them. I’m having a look at its properties as a corrosion inhibitor for mild steel !

References

Baslas, R.K. (1971)  Flavour Ind.  2, pp. 370
Elango, A., Nandi, D., Vinayagam, J., Meyyappan, A., Pal, C., Dey, S., Giri, V.S., Mukherjee, J., Garai, S., Jaisankar, P. (2009)   Antibacterial Activity and Anticorrosive Efficiency of Aqueous Methanolic Extract of Artemisia pallens (Asteraceae) and Its Major Constituent, Journal of Complementary and Integrative Medicine: 6(1), Art. 9. DOI:10.2202/1553-3840.1208
Misra, L., Chandra, A., Thakur, R.S. (1991) Fragrant components of oil from Artemisia pallens. Phytochemistry 30(2) pp. 549-552
Pujar,P.P., Sawaikar, D.D., Rojatkar, S.R., Nagasampagi, B.A. (2000) A new germacranolide from Artemisia pallens. Fitoterapia 71(5) pp. 590-592
Rojatkar, S.R., Pawar, S.S., Pujar, P.P., Sawaikar, D.D., Gurunath, S., Sathe, V.T., Nagasampagi, B.A. (1996) A germacranolide from Artemisia pallens. Phytochemistry 41(4) pp. 1105-1106
Ruikar, A.D., Jadhav, R.B., Phalgune, U.D., Rojatkar, S.R., Puranik, V.G., Deshpande, N.R. (2011) Phytochemical Investigation of Artemisia pallens. Helv. Chim. Acta 94 pp. 73-77
Thomas, A.F.,  Pitton, G. (1971)  Helv.Chim. Acta 54, pp. 1890.