Analysis of volatile compounds in Curcuma wenyujin Y.H!Chen et C!Ling by headspace solvent microextraction-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

A headspace solvent microextraction-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (HSME-GC-MS) method was described for the analysis of volatile compounds from Curcuma wenyujin Y.H. Chen et C. Ling. A comparison was made between HSME-GC-MS, solid-phase microextraction (SPME)-GC-MS and steam distillation (SD)-GC-MS methods. The number of the identified compounds was 66 for HSME-GC-MS, 71 for SPME-GC-MS and 63 for SD-GC-MS, respectively. HSME-GC-MS was found to share most of the compounds in common with the other two methods. Compared with the other two methods, HSME-GC-MS has a lower cost, more choices of extraction solvents and requires a smaller amount of sample and can directly utilizes the ground powder of traditional Chinese medicines (TCMs) for the analysis. In conclusion, HSME-GC-MS method is a simple, inexpensive and effective method for the analysis of volatile compounds in TCMs. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.