Assessment of mineral elements and heavy metals in leaves of indigenous cypress of High Atlas Mountains

Abstract

An inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry was developed to determine 20 mineral elements and heavy metals in leaves of Cupressus atlantica Gaussen, a traditional Moroccan medicinal herb from five environmentally different sites in N'Fis valley (High Atlas Mountains). The results showed in the leaves that Ca, K, P, Mg, Na and Fe were the most abundant of the elements in all samples of the studied locality. The concentrations of trace metals from the leaves of this plant were in the order Ca>K > P > Mg>Na>Fe. The results of the mineral composition were analysed by hierarchical cluster and principal component analysis that established three statistically significant clusters.

Keywords::

• Cupressus atlantica
• minerals
• heavy metals
• inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS)
• PCA

Notes

This paper was presented at the CIPAM2014 International Congress of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (Zarzis, Tunisia, 17–20 March 2014).