Cardamom Oil—The volatiles obtained from cardamom ground under normal (ambient) and cold (ice) conditions and produced by hydrodistillation were analyzed using GC/MS by Omanakutty and Joy (2007). They found that many volatiles were lost by grinding the cardamom at ambient temperatures.
In contrast, oil produced from cardamom ground under cold (ice) conditions was determined to possess the following composition:
Several cardamom genotypes belonging to (a) the Malabar type (3), the Vazhukka type (3) and the Mysore type (1) were examined for their number of seeds per capsule (fruit), oil yield per capsule, and oil composition for immature capsules, physiologically mature capsules and ripe capsules. In all cases, Lee et al. (2008) found that the number of seeds per capsule was at a maximum for the ripe capsules, while the oil yield per capsule was lowest for ripe capsules. A summary of the oil compositional studies can be found in T-1.