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numerous groups of isomers among the terpenes and terpenoids contained in the examined sample that have the same molecular weights and hence, can give identical m/z signals.

Keywords: Salvia spp., essential oils, Iow-temperature TLC-MS, Iow-temperature TLC-LC-MS, mass spectrometric fingerprinting

Correspondence: Teresa Kowalska, Institute of Chemistry, University of Silesia, 9 Szkolna Street, 40-006 Katowice, Poland. E-mail: [e-mail]

INTRODUCTION

In our earlier study [1], we were the first to propose the one-dimensional (ID) Iow-temperature thin-layer chromatography (LT TLC) to investigating the volatile fraction derived from the plant species belonging to the sagę (Salvia L.) genus. Low temperaturę of running the thin-layer chromatographic separation with volatile compounds derived from botanical materiał was first introduced in paper [2] and we consider it as a convenient altemative for the well established and the essential-oils-oriented methodology, based on gas chromatography (GC). Satisfactory performance and a variety of additional advantages of LT TLC have later been discussed in the book chapter by Koch et al. [3] and in the references contained therein. As an indisputable advantage of the LT TLC approach, we consider its simplicity and flexibility, enabling an easy fingerprinting of botanical materiał for various different purposes, perhaps one of the most important being identification and quality assurance operations, when handling commercial batches of medicinal plants traded in powdered form.

Owing to a relatively recent introduction by CAMAG (Muttenz, Switzerland) of the TLC-MS interface, a possibility emerged to easily apply mass spectrometric detection to planar chromatography. This possibility was convincingly presented in publications by Morlock et al. (e g., in [4-7]).

In publication [8], we presented a possibility of simultaneously using the LT TLC-densitometry and LT TLC-MS systems to obtain the binary fingerprints with the different sagę (Sahia) species, applying these two detectors (i e., densitometric and mass