5. The Benefits of Vetiver Essential Oil
The primary role of vetiver cultivation – is to serve the demand from the essential oil market. Vetiver comes as a steam-distilled extract from most online health retailers. While CO2 extractions and absolutes are available, they are hard to find, and most of the products you’ll encounter will be steam-distillates.
Vetiver essential oil comes from the roots of the plant, not the stems and flowers of the grass, as is common with most other types of essential oils. Before turning the roots into oil, they’re washed, and dried in the sun, before chopping and soaking the roots before distillation and extraction.
High-pressure distillation techniques can extract the oil in as little as a few hours, while more traditional systems can take up to 36-hours for extraction. There is no accepted gold standard for this process, and each oil manufacturer tends to stick to its established extraction practice, producing variable results across the industry.