What is the Difference Between Oleoresin and Essential Oil

The key difference between oleoresin and essential oil is that oleoresins are a natural mixture of essential oils and resins extracted from a plant source, whereas essential oil is a concentrated liquid containing the essence of the fragrance of the plant.

Oleoresin and essential oil are important chemical substances that come from plant sources. These substances have different uses as well.

1. Overview and Key Difference
2. What is Oleoresin
3. What is Essential Oil
4. Oleoresin vs Essential Oil in Tabular Form
5. Summary – Oleoresin vs Essential Oil

What is Oleoresin?

Oleoresin is a semi-solid extract consisting of resin and essential or fatty oil. This substance can be obtained via the evaporation of solvents that are used for production. Conifer trees have oleoresin, known as crude turpentine or gum turpentine. It contains oil of turpentine and rosin.

Typically, essential oils are obtained via steam distillation. However, oleoresin is a heavily bound substance, less volatile, and contains lipophilic compounds like resins, waxes, fats, and fatty oils. The oleoresin derivative oleo-gum or gum resins occur mainly as crude balsams. It also contains water-soluble gums. Therefore, this substance requires large-scale processing; this is specifically done in China. However, this processing technique is too labor-intensive to be viable in other countries and includes a high labor cost.

We can prepare oleoresin from spices including basil, capsicum, cardamom, celery seed, cinnamon bark, clove bud, fenugreek, fir balsam, ginger, jambu, labdanum, mace, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, pimenta, rosemary, sage, turmeric, vanilla, etc. We can use non-aqueous solvents that can be either polar or nonpolar. Polar solvents include alcohols, and nonpolar solvents include hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide, etc.

What is Essential Oil?

Essential oil is a concentrated hydrophobic liquid consisting of volatile chemical compounds from plants. These oils are also named as volatile oils, ethereal oils, aetheroleum, or named using the name of the plant, such as oil of clove.

Essential oil is named as such because it consists of the essence of the plant’s fragrance. It is the characteristic fragrance of the plant from which the oil is derived. “Essential” in this context does not refer to a substance usable by the human body as essential amino acids and essential fatty acids. These are named as such because essential amino acids and essential fatty acids are nutritionally valuable to living organisms.

Generally, essential oils are extracted by distillation using steam. In addition, there are other methods such as expression, solvent extraction, absolute oil extraction, resin tapping, wax embedding, and cold pressing. Typically, essential oils are used in manufacturing perfumes, cosmetics, soaps, air fresheners, etc. Essential oils can also be used in food flavoring, drinks, adding scents to incense and household cleaning products, etc.

What is the Difference Between Oleoresin and Essential Oil?

Oleoresin and essential oil are important chemical substances that come from plant sources. These substances have different uses as well. The key difference between oleoresin and essential oil is that oleoresins are a natural mixture of essential oils and resins extracted from a plant source, whereas essential oil is a concentrated liquid containing the essence of the fragrance of the plant. Moreover, oleoresin is used to produce drinks, processed meat, sauces, soup powders, curry powders, sweets, and noodles, while essential oils are used to ease headache, reduce gut spasms, support memory, support digestion, etc.

The below infographic presents the differences between oleoresin and essential oil in tabular form for side-by-side comparison.

Summary – Oleoresin vs Essential Oil

Oleoresin and essential oil are important chemical substances that come from plant sources. The key difference between oleoresin and essential oil is that oleoresins are a natural mixture of essential oils and resins extracted from a plant source, whereas essential oil is a concentrated liquid containing the essence of the fragrance of the plant.