Musk (deer), Tonkin musk

Warm, powdery, skin-like, faintly animal, with dried-flower and honey edges. Strongly diffusive and very long-lasting even at tiny amounts.

The entire genus Moschus is listed in CITES Appendix II; populations of Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan are in Appendix I. Deer musk has all but disappeared from commercial perfumery.

In the United States musk (Tonquin musk) is named on the 21 CFR 182.50 GRAS list. The IFRA 51 index has no entry for animal musk but prohibits several synthetic nitro musks: musk ambrette (2006), musk xylene (2009) and others; musk ketone is under a specification standard.

Trade in natural musk in Vietnam falls under wildlife and CITES rules.

Musk deer are small antlerless deer of Asian mountain forests from Siberia to the Himalaya and southern China. Males carry a musk pod under the abdomen. The secretion dries into dark brown grains called musk grains.

The trade name Tonkin (Tonquin) musk refers to Tonkin, the colonial European name for northern Vietnam. Musk from Yunnan and Tonkin was highly graded in 19th-century trade. The name marks a trade route, not a separate species.

Muscone, a fifteen-membered ring ketone, is the main odorant. Ruzicka published its structure in 1926. Synthetic nitro musks appeared from the late 19th century, followed by polycyclic and macrocyclic musks. Many nitro musks were later prohibited by IFRA.

In perfumery today the word musk almost always means a synthetic molecule. The closest natural musky materials are botanical, such as ambrette seed and angelica root.

Collecting musk historically meant killing the deer to cut out the pod. China has developed musk deer farming with extraction from live animals, mainly for traditional medicine. In international fragrance trade the material has been almost absent since the late 20th century.