Covering: Up to the end of 2019. Agarwood is a resinous portion of Aquilaria trees, which is formed in response to environmental stress factors such as physical injury or microbial attack. It is very sought-after among the natural incenses, as well as for its medicinal properties in traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine. Interestingly, the chemical constituents of agarwood and healthy Aquilaria trees are quite different. Sesquiterpenes and 2-(2-phenethyl)chromones with diverse scaffolds commonly accumulate in agarwood. Similar structures have rarely been reported from the original trees that mainly contain flavonoids, benzophenones, xanthones, lignans, simple phenolic compounds, megastigmanes, diterpenoids, triterpenoids, steroids, alkaloids, etc. This review summarizes the chemical constituents and biological activities both in agarwood and Aquilaria trees, and their biosynthesis is discussed in order to give a comprehensive overview of the research progress on agarwood.

An activity-directed fractionation and purification process was used to isolate antioxidant components from cassava stems produced in Hainan. The ethyl acetate and n-butanol fractions showed greater DPPH˙and ABTS·⁺ scavenging activities than other fractions. The ethyl acetate fraction was subjected to column chromatography, to yield ten phenolic compounds: Coniferaldehyde (1), isovanillin (2), 6-deoxyjacareubin (3), scopoletin (4), syringaldehyde (5), pinoresinol (6), p-coumaric acid (7), ficusol (8), balanophonin (9) and ethamivan (10), which possess significant antioxidant activities. The relative order of DPPH· scavenging capacity for these compounds was ascorbic acid (reference) > 6 > 1 > 8 > 10 > 9 > 3 > 4 > 7 > 5 > 2, and that of ABTS·⁺ scavenging capacity was 5 > 7 > 1 > 10 > 4 > 6 > 8 > 2 > Trolox (reference compound) > 3 > 9. The results showed that these phenolic compounds contributed to the antioxidant activity of cassava.

Phytohemical investigation on the heartwood of Dalbergia odorifera resulted in the isolation of nine flavonoids. Their structures were elucidated as sativanone (1), (3R)-vestitone (2), (3R)-2',3',7-trihydroxy-4'-methoxyisoflavanone (3), (3R)-4'-methoxy-2',3,7-trihydroxyisoflavanone (4), carthamidin (5), liquiritigenin (6), isoliquiritigenin (7), (3R)-vestitol (8), and sulfuretin (9) based on their spectral data. All compounds were evaluated for their inhibitory activity against Ralstonia solanacearum. This is the first report about anti-R. solanacearum activity of the compounds from D. odorifera.

The antioxidant activities of the ethanol, petroleum ether, ethyl acetate, n-butanol and water extract fractions from the seeds of papaya were evaluated in this study. The ethyl acetate fraction showed the strongest DPPH and hydroxyl free radical-scavenging activities, and its activities were stronger than those of ascorbic acid and sodium benzoate, respectively. The n-butanol fraction demonstrated the greatest ABTS⁺ radicals scavenging activity. The ethyl acetate fraction and the n-butanol fraction not only showed higher antioxidant activities than the petroleum ether fraction, water fraction and ethanol fraction, but also showed higher superoxide anion and hydrogen peroxide radicals scavenging activities than those of the other extract fractions. The high amount of total phenolics and total flavonoids in the ethyl acetate and n-butanol fractions contributed to their antioxidant activities. The ethyl acetate fraction was subjected to column chromatography, to yield two phenolic compounds, p-hydroxybenzoic acid (1) and vanillic acid (2), which possessed significant antioxidant activities. Therefore, the seeds of papaya and these compounds might be used as natural antioxidants.