Distilling Essential Oils from Southwest Medicinal Plants

View the project final report

Commodities

• Additional Plants: herbs

Practices

• Natural Resources/Environment: biodiversity

The purpose of this project is to demonstrate and document the economical and technological feasibility of distilling three popular and abundant Southwest medicinal plants into marketable essential oils: pinyon pine (Pinus edulis), alligator juniper (Juniperus deppeana) and desert sage (Artemisia tridentata). The project is organized into three phases:

-bulk plant collection, distillation and essential oil bottling;
-essential oil production education and outreach;
-marketing demonstration and development.

This project has the following objectives:

1)      To purchase distillation equipment

2)      To attend training for distillation of essential oils

3)      To harvest and process targeted plant materials from sites

4)      To conduct test marketing of finished essential oil product

5)      To design and implement documentation of project

6)      To conduct on-site outreach for potential producers

7)      To publish informational materials