EVALUATION OF PERFORMANCE PARAMETERS FOR TRACE ELEMENTS ANALYSIS IN PERENNIAL PLANTS

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present the validation of inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) method used for metals determination from several perennial plant samples. The suitability of two digestion procedures using wet digestion with mineral acids mixture on hot plate and microwave digestion was investigated to determine As, Cd, Cu, Fe, Mn, Pb and Zn in plants samples. The LOD of the seven analysed elements in solid samples varied between 0.20µg g-1 for Mn and 0.55µg g-1 for Pb. The found values for metals determined by ICP-OES in a vegetable certified reference material digested using the two procedures were compared with the certified values and good agreements between these values were obtained. The proposed method indicated satisfactory recovery, detection limits and standard deviations for trace metal determination in perennial plants samples.

Keywords

• ICP-OES
• plant analysis
• method validation
• multielemental analysis