Mineral Profiles of Legumes and Fruits Through Partial Least Squares Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence

Abstarct Energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (ED-XRF) has been employed for the determination of mineral elements in 15 varieties of legumes and 14 cherry samples. ED-XRF signals directly obtained from pulverized samples were modelized by partial least squares (PLS) using Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES) of a selected number of samples, after microwave assisted acid digestion, as reference data. Models were built to predict the concentration of Al, Ca, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, P, Sr and Zn. Average concentrations predicted were 6, 930, 7, 40, 6400, 990, 2100, 4 and 15 μg g −1 for Al, Ca, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, P, Sr and Zn, respectively with relative errors from 7 till 26%. In the case of Al, the methodology proposed only provided screening data.