Determination of Selenium in Libyan Food Items Using Pseudocyclic Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis

Abstract

Cyclic and pseudocyclic instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) has been used to determine the Se content of 40 Libyan food items. The selected samples include different varieties of local and imported foods such as wheat and barley products (bran and flours), rice, bread, almond, peanuts, vegetables as bean and peas, tea, coffee, sugar, and commonly used spices such as red and black paper, curry, cumin, mixture of spices, thyme, coriander, and fenugreek. Both conventional and anticoincidence gamma-ray spectrometry techniques have been employed. Pseudocyclic INAA in conjunction with anticoincidence counting has been found to provide the most reliable results. The precision of the method has been significantly improved by recycling the samples up to three times. The accuracy has been evaluated by analyzing a number of certified reference materials of varied Se levels. The detection limit has been found to vary between 26 and 90 ppb Se depending on the sample composition. The range of daily dietary intake has been calculated as 13-44 microg of Se per day.

Trace elements in Libyan Cereals: Estimation of Daily Intakes of Cobalt, Chromium, Molybdenum and Selenium

“…al. (2005) has reported that daily intake of Se in Libyan population for all food ranged between 13 to 44 µg/day [18]. However, here in the current study, the data showed daily intake of Se from cereal consumption can be exposed 34 µg/day.…”

“…al. study [18] appearance that Libyan population DOI: 10.9790/5736-1005029195 www.iosrjournals.org 95 |Page has Se deficiency. From our study we can say more investigations should be done to have good view of Se situation in Libyan population.…”

The Level of Selenium and Some Other Trace Elements in Different Libyan Arable Soils Using Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis

“…It is clear that in the Libyan soil selenium concentration is somewhat lower than in other countries, especially in the Southern part of Libya where a number of cereal crops implementation projects are present. Because the soil is poor in selenium, the low level of selenium is reflected in Libyan foods [24]. Darnah farms contain the highest amount of selenium in this study.…”

Combination and optimization of the cyclic NAA modes at the Dalat research reactor for determination of selenium in biological materials using 77mSe

“…The entire process repeats for a number of cycles [3,4]. In the case of sample with high dead time, a pseudo-cyclic NAA (PCNAA) technique was alternatively developed based on CNAA by adjusting the CNAA timing parameters [5][6][7][8], especially the waiting time between the repetitions of the irradiationdecay-counting cycles, which allowed to elapse in several minutes to days to reduce the dead time of spectrometer. Another alternative technique is a cumulative NAA, which was developed from irradiation and counting of a number of replicates of the same sample, the individual spectra are combined to generate a total spectrum [9,10].…”