To determine the chemical constituents of volatile components in saffron from the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Henan Province of China and to compare the chemical composition difference in the saffron,the total volatile components were extracted by ultrasonic-assisted solvent extraction（USE）,using five different solvents：diethyl ether,ethanol,ethyl acetate, dichloromethane and acetone,analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry（GC-MS）and compared to the standard MS data,and their relative contents were calculated by area normalization.The results showed both that USE was an efficient and rapid method for the extraction of the volatile components from saffron and that the components extracted from the same sample using different solvents were different.Comparison of the experimental results of saffron from the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Henan Province of China showed that their volatile components were different in their chemical composition and in their relative percentages.USE/GC-MS is a simple,rapid,and effective method for the analysis of volatile oil components in saffron.
A quick and sensitive method was developed for the determination of 19 metal elements in Saffron,a traditional Chinese medicinal herb,collected from Tibet Autonomous Region and Henan Province of China using inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry（ICP-AES）or inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry（ICP-MS）.The determined 19 metals in Saffron include Ca,Fe,Mg,P,Sr,Al,Mn,Zn,V,Cr,Se,Co,Ni,Mo,and heavy metals As,Cu,Cd,Hg and Pb.For all the analyzed elements,the correlative coefficients of the calibration curves were no less than 0.9938.This proposed method was accurate,and the relative standard deviations of the measurements were lower than 5.25%.It can be used for the quality control of metal elements in Saffron.
