TuberoseAbsolutes.com

Flower, concrete, absolute

Tuberose, now filed as Agave amica,1 becomes an absolute in two steps. In a 2009 Kasetsart University study, fresh flowers were soaked in hexane or petroleum ether, the solvent evaporated “leaving the concrete behind”, and the absolute was then extracted from each concrete with alcohol. The concretes were “a yellow solid with a tuberose odor”, the absolutes “brownish yellow with a strong tuberose scent”. At the optimum loading, 150 g of flowers a litre, hexane returned a yield of 0.0279 per cent; the petroleum-ether absolute smelt closer to the living flower.2 These are laboratory figures, from double-flowered stock.

Concrete by the hectare

Indian agronomy reports the intermediate. Tamil Nadu Agricultural University gives a concrete recovery of 0.08 to 0.11 per cent and 8 to 10 kg of concrete a hectare.3 ICAR researchers put single-flowered types at 0.08 to 0.14 per cent and add that “with a projected yield of 30,000 kg of loose flowers per hectare over three years, approximately 27.5 kg of concrete can be extracted”.4 A Tamil Nadu screen of hexane concretes found 0.11 to 0.16 per cent in single types and 0.06 to 0.09 in doubles,5 and the Indian Institute of Horticultural Research's single genotype IIHR 17-23SP-08 gave 0.095 per cent.6

Why no two lots match

Composition studies point to the plant before the process. Profiling seven cultivars bred in India, Kutty and Mitra found four distinct clusters by volatiles, flavonoids and primary metabolites, and suggest such profiling may help characterise cultivars “for perfumery utility”.7 Across 14 commercial cultivars, an ICAR team detected 111 volatile compounds, esters dominating; single-flowered types carried more esters and no monoterpenes, while doubles carried monoterpenes and olefins.4 The flower's age counts as well: glycosylation of scent volatiles peaked at the late mature stage, as emission declined.8 Cultivar, flower form and stage of opening all travel into the extract.

Picked at dawn, scented at night

Harvest and scent keep different hours. Tuberose emission is “rhythmic and nocturnal”, peaking at night, with enzyme activity rising just before the peak.9 Yet Tamil Nadu Agricultural University has loose florets “plucked during early morning hours before 8 am daily, when they start to open”,3 and India's National Horticulture Board likewise has individual flowers picked in the early morning, with August and September the peak months.10 Handling then counts: in a 2025 study of jasmine and tuberose growers in Tamil Nadu, “a lack of cold storage and improper handling causes 20 to 30 percent wastage”.11

Enfleurage against solvent

Enfleurage is the older route. Piesse in 1857 described glass-bottomed frames spread with fat, flowers left on them “from twelve to seventy-two hours” and renewed through the season, and counted tuberose among flowers known from fats and oils rather than as essential oils.12 The 2009 trials put numbers on it: cold enfleurage on palm stearin averaged 0.3137 per cent and hot enfleurage in palm oil 6.5808 per cent, but “absolutes from both methods contained palm wax and palm oil”, carried over by the ethanol. The cold absolute smelt closest to fresh flowers; solvent extraction “was more cost-efficient than the enfleurage process”.2

What each route pulls out

Method shapes the profile as well as the yield. By relative peak area, methyl benzoate led the cold-enfleurage absolute at 30.17 per cent, with benzyl benzoate at 23.64, 7-decen-5-olide 13.33 and methyl salicylate 12.11; in the hot-enfleurage absolute methyl benzoate rose to 44.85. The hexane absolute was headed by benzyl benzoate (24.25), pentacosane (19.23) and 7-decen-5-olide (14.96), while petroleum ether drew out more plant wax, pentacosane reaching 29.44.2 Other work reports geraniol, indole and methyl anthranilate in the absolute.13 The lactones have their own literature: Maurer and Hauser identified six unsaturated γ-lactones in tuberose absolute, corroborated each by synthesis, and named the bicyclic one tuberolide.14

Carbon dioxide as the solvent

Supercritical carbon dioxide has been tried on the double-flowered variety. Fragoso-Jiménez and colleagues ran extractions at 18, 28 and 38 MPa and at 313, 323 and 333 K, with an extract yield of 2.5 per cent, and found “a significant variation in chemical composition” with the conditions. Methyl isoeugenol, benzyl benzoate, methyl anthranilate, pentacosene and heptacosene, which they call characteristic of tuberose, “were obtained mainly at 18 MPa and 333 K”.15 On that evidence, pressure and temperature belong in the description of any CO₂ extract of tuberose, beside the flower it came from.

No ISO profile for tuberose

ISO's essential-oils committee, ISO/TC 54, lists standards for rose, neroli, ylang-ylang, vetiver and dozens of other materials; its catalogue, withdrawn titles and projects included, shows none for tuberose.16 Its shared vocabulary, ISO 9235:2021, “specifies the terms and definitions relating to aromatic natural raw materials”.17 For a buyer, the reference points are the composition studies above. The value sits in processing: a 2025 Tamil Nadu study recorded the highest benefit-cost ratio at perfume factories, 1:3.17 for tuberose, “due to value addition and the high market price of absolute from extraction”.11 TuberoseAbsolutes.com has no affiliation with ISO, any institute named here, or any producer.

Who builds on a name like TuberoseAbsolutes.com

• Fragrance houses and naturals buyers. Lots differ by cultivar and by method.72
• Extraction plants. Concrete counted by the hectare.34
• Exporters and brokers. France, the USA, Germany, the UAE, Japan.11
• Extraction-technology firms. CO₂ settings change the profile.15
• Breeders and research institutes. Single types for concrete; IIHR 17-23SP-08.64
• Analytical laboratories. Lactones, esters and waxes, with no ISO profile to lean on.1416

1. Agave amica (Medik.) Thiede & Govaerts.World Flora Online
2. Rakthaworn P et al. Extraction methods for tuberose oil.Kasetsart J (Nat Sci), 2009
3. Flower crops: tuberose.TNAU Agritech Portal
4. Jadhav PR et al. Scent in single- vs double-flowered tuberose.Plant Biol, 2026
5. Ranchana P et al. Concrete of tuberose grown in Tamil Nadu.Prog Hortic, 2015
6. Bharathi TU et al. Tuberose genotype IIHR 17-23SP-08.J Hortic Sci, 2023
7. Kutty NN, Mitra A. Metabolite variation among tuberose cultivars.Phytochemistry, 2019
8. Kutty NN et al. Floral metabolite network in tuberose.Plant Mol Biol, 2021
9. Maiti S, Mitra A. Spatio-temporal scent emission in P. tuberosa.Plant Cell Physiol, 2017
10. Tuberose: harvesting.National Horticulture Board, India
11. Nisha VS et al. Value chain of jasmine and tuberose in Tamil Nadu.Madras Agric J, 2025
12. Piesse GWS. The Art of Perfumery.Philadelphia, 1857 (Project Gutenberg)
13. Nidiry ES, Babu CS. Tuberose absolute and its constituents.Phytother Res, 2005
14. Maurer B, Hauser A. New γ-lactones from tuberose absolute.Helv Chim Acta, 1982
15. Fragoso-Jiménez JC et al. Supercritical CO₂ extracts of P. tuberosa.Processes, 2019
16. ISO/TC 54 Essential oils: standards catalogue.ISO, accessed 2026
17. ISO 9235:2021, Aromatic natural raw materials: vocabulary.ISO, 2021