In medicinal plants, mass spectrometry with gas chromatography has an effective application to the determination as well as quantification of essential oil components. Nevertheless, since the excessively long period is required for sample preparation, the efficiency is restricted. The purpose of this study was to optimize a novel direct thermal desorption procedure coupled with mass spectrometry and gas chromatography for identification and semi-quantification of volatile components in the medicinal plant samples. A direct thermal desorption mass spectrometry with gas chromatography technique has been employed to determine volatile components of a medicinal plant. The mentioned technique was used for desorption of volatile components of Stachys inflata Benth in the gas chromatography injection port. In this approach, only a dry sample of 2 mg is required for obtaining results. The results have indicated the identification and quantification more than 35 volatile compounds for Stachys inflata Benth. All obtained results indicate that the current approach is a successful instrument for high-speed analysis of volatile components of plants. Furthermore, there are good correlations between the volatile components constituent determined by direct thermal desorption technique and conventional hydrodistillation method. The results indicated that the direct thermal desorption technique is a fast, simple, low-cost, highly efficient and solvent-free extraction approach.
