The Laboratorium voor Technische Botanie (Laboratory for Technical Botany) at Delft in the Netherlands was an early-twentieth-century Dutch scientific laboratory devoted to the technical-botanical study of plant raw materials — especially the essential-oil plants, fibres, tannins, and other industrial crops of the Netherlands Indies. The laboratory was a regular consultant of the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum at Amsterdam in the evaluation of Netherlands Indies plant samples, and its report on the Atjeh patchouli leaf of January-February 1924, preserved in *Bericht* No. 21 of the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum (April 1925), was the first systematic European laboratory distillation-and-analysis of Atjeh-grown patchouli leaf.
The Laboratory
The Laboratorium voor Technische Botanie at Delft was one of the specialist scientific laboratories of the Netherlands that served the colonial raw-material research programme. The laboratory’s principal function was the technical-botanical analysis of plant raw materials — the determination of the yield, the chemical composition, and the industrial applicability of plant substances. The laboratory’s work was closely related to that of the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum at Amsterdam, which distributed colonial plant samples to the laboratory for analysis, and to that of the Botanischer Garten at Buitenzorg in the Netherlands Indies, which supplied the botanical identifications.
The laboratory’s reference works included the standard German-language essential-oil reference Gildemeister und Hoffmann, Die ätherischen Öle (The Ethereal Oils), cited as the principal botanical-chemical authority in the 1924 report on Atjeh patchouli leaf, alongside the Korte Berichten of the Department of Agriculture and Dr. A. W. K. de Jong’s article in Teysmannia XX (1909), p. 114, 305.
The 1924 Atjeh Patchouli Leaf Report
The Afdeeling Handelsmuseum at Amsterdam received two bales of Atjeh patchouli leaf in the autumn of 1923, shipped from Atjeh by way of the landbouwconsulent at Koeta Radja on the initiative of E. de Kruyff of the Afdeeling Handel at Buitenzorg. The Handelsmuseum distributed the leaf, in the proportion of one-third, to the Laboratorium voor Technische Botanie at Delft, and one-third each to two Dutch essential-oil factories (anonymised in the published correspondence as “a” and “b”).
The Delft laboratory’s report, dated January-February 1924, is the earliest systematic European laboratory distillation-and-analysis of Atjeh-grown patchouli leaf in the surviving record. The laboratory recorded:
- Material: 20 kg of fermented patchouli leaf with “onaangename, onfrissche reuk” (an unpleasant, unfresh smell).
- Moisture content: On drying a sample, 15% water was present in the leaf.
- Quantitative distillation: Distillation at 100-120 °C (higher not being possible without decomposition products); two parallel trials gave, in three hourly fractions, yields of 7.6 / 1.6 / 1.0 cc and 6.5 / 1.0 / 0.3 cc per 250 g of leaf — that is, total yields of 4.38% and 4.10% respectively.
- Large-scale distillation: 17 kg of leaf gave 520 g of oil — a yield of 4.0%.
- Physical constants of the oil: density 0.9707 at 15.7°, refractive index 1.5077 at 18°, optical rotation −58°2’ at 20°.
The laboratory’s qualitative observation was: “Deze patchouli-olie komt het meest overeen met de Singapore-patchouli-olie.” — This patchouli oil is the most similar to Singapore patchouli oil. The corresponding constants for Singapore patchouli oil were given as density 0.9628, refractive index 1.50784, optical rotation −58° to −60°.
The laboratory observed that “De reuk van deze olie was buitengewoon sterk” — the odour of this oil was extraordinarily strong — but, having no freshly distilled oil for comparison, the laboratory offered no final qualitative judgement: “Wij konden deze echter niet met andere versch gedestilleerde olie vergelijken en wagen ons dus niet aan een oordeel.”
The laboratory’s view on the yield was respectful: the yield could “behoorlijk genoemd worden” (be called decent), since in the Indies the yield for Singapore leaf was 2.6% and for the same leaf distilled in Europe 4%.
Significance
The Laboratorium voor Technische Botanie at Delft is significant for the encyclopedia of Aceh history as the first European scientific laboratory to publish a systematic distillation-and-analysis of Atjeh-grown patchouli leaf. Its January-February 1924 report — preserved in the 1925 Bericht of the Afdeeling Handelsmuseum — established that the constants of Atjeh patchouli oil were the closest of any oil yet analysed to those of Singapore patchouli oil, and that the odour of the freshly distilled oil was “buitengewoon sterk” (extraordinarily strong). The laboratory’s report was the first external scientific confirmation that Atjeh-grown patchouli leaf was a serious candidate for the production of prime patchouli oil — a confirmation that prepared the way for Van Vreeswijk’s Bakongan discovery of August 1924 and for the final European triumph of the Atjeh patchouli experiments in the winter of 1924-1925.
See Also
- Atjeh patchouli experiments (1921-1925)
- Over patchouly-olie en patchouly-blad van Atjeh (1925)
- Atjehsche Oliefabriek
- Schimmel & Co.
- Roure, Bertrand fils
- Polak & Schwarz’s Essencefabrieken
- Afdeeling Handelsmuseum
- Koninklijke Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut
- Delft
- Netherlands
- Buitenzorg
- Koeta Radja
- E. de Kruyff
- 1923
- 1924
- 1925
Source
Over patchouly-olie en patchouly-blad van Atjeh (Noord-Sumatra). Berichten van de Afdeeling Handelsmuseum van de Kon. Vereeniging Koloniaal Instituut, No. 21. Overgedrukt uit De Indische Mercuur van 8 en 15 Mei 1925. Amsterdam: Druk De Bussy. OCR-filename: 20260801_233856_DLP-153-Over_patchouly_olie_en_patchouly_blad_van_Atjeh_Noord_Sumatra_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 7-8 (January-February 1924 report of the Laboratorium voor Technische Botanie, Delft).