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fruit of star anise up to 80,000 tons. The planted area in China is about 360,000 hectares and Vietnamabout 56,000 1 . The global output of anise oil was overOther Areas, 50t, 2%2,500 tons in 2007, of which about 2,200 tons were fromChina and some 300 tons from Vietnam, whose Vietnam, 300t, 12% Chinaproduction accounted for 12% of global output in the VietnamOther Areasworld. 644.5 tons of anise oil was exported which isabout 30% of China’s output in 2007.China, 2200t, 86%In China Illicium verum is found in Guangxi, Yunnan,Guizhou, Guangdong, Fujian and so on. Guangxi is themain production area, and is famous as “the land of staranise”. The plant can fruit twice a year, January toFebruary and August to September, with autumn the keyseason. The oil yields are summarized in Table 3.Figure 2 Global anethole distribution 2007Other Areas: Cambodia, Burma, Indonesia, Philippine, Mexico,Haiti and so on.Table 3 Illicium verum oil yieldsPartYield(%)FreshfruitDryfruit2-3 8.05-12Freshleaves0.67-0.95Dryleaves1.78-4.63Drybranch1.36Drybark0.18-0.25DrywoodDryroot0.053 0.5280% of world star anise oil comes from China, over 85% of that produced in Guangxi. The demand forthis oil is over 3,000 tons per year including anethole. The fruit of illicium verum is consistently usedas a spice and in Chinese medicine.Production from CSTAs is well known, CST is a mixture of C10 monoterpene hydrocarbon, such as #-pinene (60%-65%),$-pinene (25%-35%) and other monoterpenes including a little anethole (0.04%-2.0%). In the rosinvolatile component the anethole content is very small, less than 0.5% generally. But because of thevery big quantity of rosin, a great deal of anethole is gained. The total quantity of turpentine was about311,000 tons in 1994, the high production in the year, including about 88,000 tons of gum turpentineand 223,000 tons of mainly CST and a little tall oil.Some components such as anethole,methylchavicol, #-terpineol, caryophyllene areobtained by steam distillation. Generally, theabove four components comprise about 1%-2%of CST, and after further separation, the mixtureof anethole and caryophllene is about 0.5% ofCST. Anethole is removed from the mixture bycrystallization. The fraction containingmethylchavicol and #-terpineol is about 1% intotal CST. The mixture of trans- and cisanetholeat the ratio 87:13 is obtained after anisomerization reaction catalysed by potassiumCrystallisationDistillation2.2 Production from CST (2)Mixture of anethole andcaryophllene (0.5%)caryophlleneAbout 1.5% high boilingPoint fraction of CSTanetholeDistillationMixture of methylchavicoland !-terpineol!-terpineolisomerizationCrystallizationDistillation1 Star anise oil in China Ms. Cindy Xiong, IFEAT Shanghai Conference 2009106