Chemical composition, UV/vis absorptivity, and antioxidant activity of essential oils from bark and leaf of phoebe zhennan S. K. Lee & F. N. Wei

The chemical composition of essential oils (EO) from bark and leaf of P. zhennan was identified by GC-MS. The compounds of α-calacorene, τ-cadinol, β-eudesmol and d-cadinene were found in the essential oils from both bark and leaf. The UV-Vis spectra results indicated the EO could completely absorbed the UV light at the wavelength range of 200-370 nm, revealing that EO had great potential as additives for manufacturing UV light blocking products. The radical DPPH scavenging activity assay showed that both the bark and leaf EO possessed strong DPPH radical scavenging activity of 90.25% and 82.10% respectively, which provides an important theoretical guiding in exploiting the value of P. zhennan bark and leaf.