Resumen
Nepeta Cataria is widely known for its hallucinogenic effects on the cats? behaviour. Commonly used methods to extract its essential oil are Soxhlet extraction (SE) and water-based methods. Due to solvent usage during extraction process, SE raises safety concerns as it is often used on cats. Water-based extraction methods are the safest extraction methods as it only requires water. This study aims to compare SE and water-based extraction methods such as steam distillation (SD), hydrodistillation (HD), and reflux extraction (RE), in terms of yield and nepetalactone concentration of Nepeta Cataria essential oil. This study also aims to determine the percentage of felines affected by water-based extracted essential oil by observing cats? behavioural responses when exposed to it. Each water-based method was conducted using constant parameters such as sample mass, water volume, and distillation time, which are 30g, 150ml, and 2.5 hours respectively. For SE, the parameters such as solvent concentration, solvent-to-material ratio, and extraction time were varied, and response surface methodology is applied to obtain the most optimised parameters. The chemical analysis was carried out by using HPLC. A hundred randomly selected cats were exposed to the water-based extracted essential oil and their behaviour were observed. The average percentage yield for SD, HD, and RE were 4.645%, 3.275%, and 1.665% respectively. The average nepetalactone concentration obtained for each method were 0.00525, 0.0041, and 0.00405% respectively. The percentage of cats affected by water-based extracted oil were 72%, 67%, and 59% respectively. The optimised parameters for SE were achieved at solvent concentration, solvent-to-material ratio, and extraction time of 97.05%, 36.82, and 294.5 min. It is concluded that the most suitable method to extract nepetalactone from Nepeta Cataria is SE as it has the highest yield of essential oil and concentration of nepetalactone. SD is the best water-based extraction method.