Rapid determination of volatile compounds emitted from Chimonanthus praecox flowers by HS-SPME-GC-MS.

A novel rapid, simple and solvent-free method was developed for determination of the volatile compounds from the flowers of Chimonanthus praecox Link using headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The SPME conditions were firstly optimized and applied to sampling of the volatile compounds emitted from living Chimonanthus praecox L. flowers and excised Chimonanthus praecox L. flowers. Thirty-one compounds emitted from living flowers were identified for the first time, which mainly included 4-methyl-1,3-pentadiene (2.0%), a-phellandrene (4.7%), benzyl methanol (11.1%), trans-linalool oxide (furanyl ring) (5.3%), a-linalool (36.0%), methyl salicylate (24.5%) and acetic acid benzyl ester (5.9%). Comparing the emission from living flowers and excised flowers, twenty-eight compounds were found to be detected in the two emissions, and three compounds, n-pentadecane, n-cetane and n-heptadecane, were only found in the emission from the living flowers, which shows that they might be biomarker compounds.