Distribution of Elements in Durum Wheat Seed and Milling Products: Discrimination between Cultivation Methods through...

Area of Science:

• Agricultural Chemistry
• Food Science
• Analytical Chemistry

Background:

• Durum wheat and its milling products are staple foods, necessitating an understanding of their characteristics.
• Elemental content can vary based on agricultural practices, impacting food quality and authenticity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate elemental concentrations in durum wheat (whole seed, bran, semolina, flour) grown under organic and conventional farming.
• To determine if elemental profiles can differentiate between organic and conventional durum wheat products.
• To assess the potential for elemental analysis in preventing fraud in wheat products.

Main Methods:

• Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES) was used to determine the concentrations of 28 elements.
• Multivariate discriminant analysis, specifically Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA), was applied to the elemental data.
• Classification accuracy was evaluated for different milling products using specific elemental combinations.

Main Results:

• Elemental abundance varied across milling products, with higher concentrations generally found in bran.
• Specific elements like Antimony (Sb) and Thallium (Tl) showed limited presence in certain samples.
• Small but significant differences in elements like Silver (Ag), Boron (B), and Vanadium (V) were observed between organic and conventional cultivation.
• Classification models achieved high accuracy (e.g., 0.92 for flour using B, K, Se; perfect prediction for semolina with additional elements).

Conclusions:

• Five key elements (Boron, Cadmium, Copper, Potassium, Selenium) are crucial for distinguishing between organic and conventional durum wheat.
• Elemental profiling effectively differentiates milling products and can identify cultivation provenance.
• This elemental analysis method shows promise for detecting fraud in the food industry.