ABSTRACT
Any treatment of the subject of plant volatile organic compounds (VOCs) must begin with a description of how these compounds are detected and identified. This chapter provides the practical approaches to plant VOC analysis and discusses their advantages and limitations as well as future developments. VOC emissions from photosynthetic tissues are also controlled by diurnal cycles and circadian rhythms. Moreover, emissions of root derived VOCs may be affected by the type of aboveground stress a plant is exposed to or vice versa. To construct a chamber for headspace collection, all materials that may retain volatiles or cause bleeding of compounds that contaminate the system need to be avoided. Sampling of VOCs from a static headspace of whole plants or plant tissues is most often performed in closed tubes or chambers. Solid phase microextraction is a very fast, effective and simple method to collect volatiles. The effectiveness of Solid phase microextraction extraction is influenced by the concentration of the VOC.
