Cubebenes are a pair of chemical compounds, classified as sesquiterpenes, first isolated from Piper cubeba berries, known as cubebs.

The volatile oil from the distillation of cubebs is a pale green or blue-yellow viscous liquid with a warm woody, slightly camphoraceous odor which is mostly cubebene which comes in two forms, α- and β-cubebene, both with the molecular formula C15H24. They differ only in the position of a double bond which is endocyclic (part of the five-membered ring) in α-cubebene, but exocyclic in the β isomer.

Additional plant sources

A 2022 study detected α-cubebene in samples of oleoresin from three pine species (Pinus elliottii, Pinus pinaster, Pinus tropicalis) via mass spectrometry.

α-cubebene was detected in Lemberger grapes via headspace gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.

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