INTRODUCTION
At present, the demand for natural fragrances, food additives, and flavors considerably grows. Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare Mill.) is a raw material for the production of a number of fragrances forming the basis of contemporary perfumery and cosmetics and widely applied in medicine and food industry.
Fennel is a perennial (biennial, if cultivated) herbal plant of the Apiaceae family with a height of up to 2 m. Leaves are multi-pinnatisect. Flowers are small golden-yellow and form a complex double multiradiate umbrel. Fennel fruits are fragrant, greenish-brown or grey-green, naked, costate, large, elongated and represent nearly cylindrical cremocarps, which can easily split into two mericarps after maturation [1, 2].
Fennel fruits are used in industrial processing, but their uneven maturation and fall lead to considerable harvest losses, so some studies on the processing of whole plants were performed in 1970, although the essential oil from whole plants differed from the essential oil from mature fruits in quality: the content of anethol, a principal component, was less than 60% and did not satisfied the fennel essential oil quality standard [3].
It should be noted that all the technology for the processing of fennel in the form of whole plants basically have a character of research rather than recommendation, as indicated by the fact that the attention in each communication is paid only to the yield of essential oil. The proposed technology for the processing of whole fennel plants allows the more exhaustive utilization of initial raw materials and their diversification depending on the demand for the target product.
It is commonly known that the processing of plant raw materials for the production of products of different quality and destination is accompanied by the generation of bulky waste residues at each stage. In this connection, the problem of the complex processing of essential oil and medicinal plant raw materials with the use of resource-saving technologies is topical [4, 5].
Such an approach to the processing of plant raw materials necessitates the complex studies of initial essential oil raw materials and waste residues of their processing, and also the improvement of methods for the production of essential oil, extracts, and other biologically active components. Special attention is currently paid to the development of environmentally-safe and low-waste technologies for the complex processing of plant raw materials [6].
The lack of works on the complex utilization of fennel plants has necessitated the more detailed study of the biochemical composition of raw materials and the development of complex fennel processing technologies, which must provide the most exhaustive extraction of biologically active substances with different spectra of activity.
