Benchmarking Study of Cymbopogon citratus and C. nardus for Its Development of Functional Food Ingredient for Anti-diabetic Treatment

Abstract

Cymbopogon citratus and Cymbopogon nardus are two species of Cymbopogon that are commonly cultivated in Indonesia. Studies have shown Cymbopogon activities and potencies for development for various diseases including diabetic treatment. Both C. citratus and C. nardus have long history for culinary and medicinal herb in Indonesia and therefore have a sustainable commercial production that will support their development for functional food ingredient. This work provides a study about industrial observation in several herbal industries along with literature review of herbal industries condition in Indonesia as a benchmarking study to summarize the required research or technical development of Cymbopogon as functional food ingredients. During industrial observation it was shown that Cymbopogon usage in herbal industries were more popular as flavorings rather than for its functionalities. The industrialobservation to several reputable herbal industries showed that despite the similar infrastructure used for extraction and pulverization method, the industries might have different supply procurement and quality requirement, extraction principle, product character and quality control, and therefore market character. The literature review have shown several studies of Cymbopogon functionalities in organic solvents, empirical uses of Cymbopogon as medicinalherbs in water extract, optimization in Cymbopogon cultivation. Heavy studies have been done in the extraction, usage, and characterization of essential oils from Cymbopogon. Many literature showed formulation of Cymbogon for culinary purpose but there are yet formulation based on its functional activities. Both industrial observation and literature review called in the requirement of more study of activities and stabilities of the Cymbopogon aqueous andethanolic extracts, optimization of post-harvest processing, extraction, and further processing to produce Cymbopogon ingredients based on activities and efficiency, and the determination of active fraction/compound(s) responsible for the activity and formulation of food that will enable the usage direction of functional food ingredients.