[Study on determination of eight metal elements in Hainan arecanut leaf by flame atomic absorption spectrophotometry]

Arecanut is a sort of palm that is important economic crop for the farmers in Hainan province of China, wherein there are many kinds of metal elements such as K, Ca, Na, Mg, Fe, Mn, Cu, Zn etc. These elements are important nutrition for the growth of arecanut. It is very valuable to study on the content of these metal elements in arecanut leaf in terms of plant nutriology of arecanut. The arecanut leaf in Wangling county, Hainan province of China was sampled by diagonal-field-sampling method. Refering to other plant sample determination by FAAS, the detailed studies are done with different digestion and determination methods. In the present paper the effects of mixed acid of HNO3-HClO4 digestion method on determining the amount of metal elements in the arecanut leaf by FAAS is reported, and another one is incineration digestion method. FAAS method was established for the determination of K, Ca, Mg, Na, Fe, Mn, Cu and Zn The samples were incinerated or heated with HNO3-HClO4 (4:1). In the meantime, the optimum parameters of FAAS and effects of different digestion methods on the results were discussed. The recovery rate of standard addition is 98.36%-102.38% in the first method; RSD is 0.42%-2.328% (n=6); The recovery rate of standard addition is 99.22%-103.72% in the second method; RSD is 0.58%-1.283 (n=6). The metal amount determined by the first method is lower than the second method, the ratio is 0.9703-0.9934. The two methods are satisfied, but the latter is better. It is precise enough to common experiment to use flame atomic absorption spectrophotometry with digestion by incineration If the especially precise experiment is required, the digestion methods with mixed acid of HNO3-HClO4 may be introduced. The paper introduced methods dependable for determination of some metal elements in order to study on some nutrient effects of these metal elements in arecanut.