With strong dissolution abilities of ionic liquids to plant cell walls, an integrated microwave-assisted ionic liquids pretreatment followed by hydro-distillation method (MILP-MHD) was performed for the efficient extraction of essential oil from the rare Dryopteris fragrans. Under optimal conditions, this innovative MILP-MHD provided the remarkable superiority of much higher yield (0.91%) of D. fragrans essential oil (DEO) within much shorter extraction duration (14.2 min) than those of the reported solvent-free microwave extraction technique (0.33% and 94 min). Furthermore, the antioxidant efficacy of DEO in the stabilization of sunflower oil was determined and found to be comparable to the commonly-employed alpha-tocopherol (VE) but a little lower than the synthetic antioxidant butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT). Therefore, MILP-MHD is a potential and highly efficient technique for the extraction of valuable essential oils in flavor food industries and DEO can be explored as a potent natural antioxidant additive for edible oils or lipid foods storage. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.