Abstract: Citral is extracted from Litsea cubeba with microwave radiation.Content of essential oil extracted from L.cubeba fruit using microwave radiation is on an average 2.48% higher than that using traditional direct steam distillation.Adopting gas chromatography with temperature programming,citral content in the oil was determined to be 68.46%,at recovery 101.3%,relative standard deviation 0.28%, linear relative coefficient 0.9997,which are in good agreement with those measured by internal standard method,but the operation is simpler than both the internal standard and GB 11424-89 methods.

Key words: Litsea cubeba, citral