The percentage yield of the essential oil of G. jasminoides flowers from steam
distillation and water and steam distillation method were 0.0026, 0.0200% v/w (gram fresh
weight) respectively (Figure 1). Water and steam distillation gave higher oil yield than steam
distillation. Extraction of gardenia flowers by distillation method gave small amount of oil yield.
Although the distillation method has traditionally been applied for the recovery of essential oils
from plant materials. One of the disadvantages of the distillation method is that essential oils
undergo chemical alterations and the heat sensitive compounds can easily be destroyed
resulted in low quantity of oil yield (Meshkatalsadat et al, 2010) Oils obtained by both
distillation methods were deep yellow liquid with gardenia flower odor (Table 1). Nine and six
constituents of gardenia oil obtained from water and steam distillation and steam distillation
have been identified by using GC-MS, in which (Z)-3-hexenyl tiglate and linalool are the main
components of gardenia oil. Chemical compositions of these oil from different method were
mostly similar, whereas relative concentration of the identified compounds is apparently
different. The (Z)-3-hexenyl tiglate from gardenia oil which extracted by steam distillation was
higher percentage (65.68%) than the yield from water and steam distillation (54.82%) (Table
1). This data correlate with those of Chaichana et al. (2009) they reported that main
composition of gardenia oil were linalool, alpha-farnesene, z-3-hexenyl tiglate and trans-betaocimene