in this paper, a simple method based on gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (gc-ms) following microwave-assisted headspace single-drop microextraction (ma-hs-sdme) was developed for the determination of essential oil composition of prangos uloptera. the ma-hs-sdme parameters including the nature of extracting solvent, microwave power, extraction time, sample weight and microdrop volume were optimized. the method was compared with traditional hydrodistillation (hd). sixty components were extracted and identified. the main constituents, extracted by sdme and hd, respectively, included -3-carene (32.1% vs. 26.3%), -pinene (16.8% vs. 15.4%) and camphene (4.1% vs. 2.7%). the relative standard deviation (rsd) values of less than 10% show that the proposed method has good repeatability and it is fast.