Trace element levels in some kinds of dates

Monitoring of Heavy Metal Content in Fruits and Vegetables Collected from Production and Market Sites in the Misurata Area of Libya

“…Comparison of the metal content in fruit and vegetables in some other parts of the world is shown in Table 4 and revealed that the levels are generally comparable in Libya and elsewhere. On the other hand, the concentration of Pb in apples was significantly lower than that detected in India, Egypt, and Turkey [11][12][13]. In contrast, the concentration of Pb in potatoes was found to be higher than that found in the USA, for example [15].…”

Multi-Element Analysis of Spanish Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Based Techniques. Discrimination Using Multivariate Statistical Analysis

“…Different analytical methods for the elemental analysis of dates have been reported (Al-Hooti et al 1998 ;Tang et al 2013 ;Ahmed et al 1995 ;Elleuch et al 2008 ;Khan et al 2008 ;Al-Farsi et al 2005 ;Sahari et al 2007 ;Besbes et al 2004 ;Mohamed 2000 ;Pillay et al 2002 ;Rastegar et al 2012 ;Williams et al 2005 ). In general terms, most of the methodologies employed in the literature have not been validated.…”

“…Some works (Khan et al 2008 ;Al-Farsi et al 2005 ) employed the AOAC 985.35 method, specifically developed for the analysis of Ca, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Na, and Zn in infant formula, enteral products, and pet foods by atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS). Among this group of techniques, flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS) is the most widely reported for elemental date analysis (Ahmed et al 1995 ;Elleuch et al 2008 ;Khan et al 2008 ;Besbes et al 2004 ;Mohamed 2000 ). Nevertheless, the typical limits of detection exhibit by this technique makes it inappropriate to quantify elements at ultra-trace levels (Ebdon et al 1998 ).…”

“…No comparison with other date analysis methodologies can be performed due to the lack of data reported. Nevertheless, analyte losses during the sample treatment are expected to be reduced when using a closedvessel microwave digestion method when compared with those widely used in the literature (Kebbekus 2003 ), i.e., dry ashing procedure at temperatures above 500 °C (Ahmed et al 1995 ;Elleuch et al 2008 ;Khan et al 2008 ;Al-Farsi et al 2005 ;Besbes et al 2004 ;Pillay et al 2002 ) and open-vessel acid digestion (Mohamed 2000 ;Williams et al 2005 ;Al-Hooti et al 1998 ). Ali- Mohamed and Khamis ( 2004 ) also employed a closed-vessel microwave digestion procedure, but unfortunately, no accuracy data was provided by the authors.…”

“…Thus, 100 g of dates approximately e.Proofing http://eproofing.springer.com/journals/printpage.php?token=bKq_jSs... provides up to 24 % Mg, 33 % K, 13 % Mn, 46 % Cu, and 20 % Cr of the daily recommended dietary allowance for adults. Calcium, K, Mg, Na, and P are the major elements present in dates flesh and seed (Ahmed et al 1995 ;Elleuch et al 2008 ;Khan et al 2008 ;Besbes et al 2004 ) whereas Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb, Se, and Zn are found at ultra-trace levels (Al-Farsi et al 2005 ;Mohamed 2000 ;Pillay et al 2002 ). Dates' elemental composition strongly depends on the ripening stage, variety, and location (Tang et al 2013 ).…”