Natural ¹⁵N Abundance Can Aid the Discrimination of Organic and Conventional Rice

Abstract

against food fraud need to be developed to prevent misrepresentation. Considerable scientific efforts are underway to develop objective methods of distinguishing organically grown food from conventionally cultivated crops. With respect to pesticide use, methods of detecting pesticide residues have been developed (Tanizawa et al. 2005, Kobayashi 2009). To identify the fertilizer management regime during cultivation, it may be feasible to use natural 15 N abundance (δ 15 N value) to discriminate between organically and conventionally grown crops. The δ 15 N values of organically grown crops, which are grown without synthetic fertilizer, tend to be higher than those of conventionally grown crops for which synthetic fertilizer has been used; this difference has been reported

Carbon and Nitrogen Isotope Ratios of Food and Beverage in Brazil

“…However, the use of fertilizers with δ 15 N values around 0% can be distinguished from the use of manures with more positive δ 15 N values [21,22]. Thus, as a first approach, δ 15 N of crops may be an indicative of the application of synthetic or organic fertilizers for improving plant growth (e.g., [23]).…”