Certain population in rural zones are still getting assistance from the traditional and folkloric medical systems. Before they cease to exist, this practice and knowledge need to be documented. Acorus calamus is a well-known aromatic herb with a rhizome that has been exhibited various therapeutic applications like gastroenteritis, antibacterial, antioxidant, antifungal, neuroprotective, antidiabetic, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and anti-asthmatic activity. In Siddha system, the thermally treated dried rhizome of A. calamus is generally used to cure gastrointestinal and neurological ailments occur especially in infants by mixing the powder of rhizome with milk, ghee, and water. In this study, we evaluate the effect of thermal treatment on screening of bioactive compounds from A. calamus rhizome. The dried rhizome was thermally treated at different temperatures and incubation periods followed by ethanol extraction for 12 h to obtain the bioactive compounds profile. The temperature was optimized to 500 °C for 100 s of incubation based on the number of identified compounds through GC–MS analysis. The optimized samples were further analyzed by using LC–MS/MS, FTIR, micro-Raman, DLS-zeta potential, and XRD. A number of sesquiterpenoids, alkaloids, fatty acids, amino acid derivatives, sterols, and glucosides were detected in the aforementioned methods. The difference was observed in the size and charge of thermally treated and control dried rhizome. This indicates the short time exposure of thermally treated rhizome to be enough to retrieve the major bioactive compounds and also has tremendous application to revert the ailments, over to dried control rhizome.
