Evaluation of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen isotope ratio measurement data for characterization of organically and conventionally cultivated spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) grain
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2021
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Abstrakt
With the growing interest of public in the quality of their consumed food, organic
produce has been steadily gaining an important place in everyday menus of our society. The
growing demand has boosted organic farming and we have also seen the price difference between
organic products and their conventional counterparts. It is important to the public to have security,
that the food labelled ‘organic’ has really been grown according to the good practices of organic
farming and that it has not received any chemical pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizers.
Stable isotope ratios of crops from different crop management systems can help to answer these
questions, as these values depend on the growing conditions, fertilizers used etc. In this study,
10 barley grain samples from conventional and organic crop management systems have been
studied. Carbon, nitrogen and oxygen isotope ratios have been determined and the element
content in the samples has been calculated. Student’s t-test has been performed to evaluate
whether the differences between various parameters are significant. For potential clustering and
discrimination of organic and conventional grains principal component analysis has been carried
out. The PCA showed that no significant clustering can be observed, however the Student’s t-test
for δ15N values confirmed that barley grown with green-manure fertilizers are significantly
(p < 0.01) enriched with the heavier nitrogen isotope. Furthermore, it has been concluded that the
total element content of carbon and nitrogen in barley grains does not correlate with the stable
isotope ratios and cannot help with discriminating of these samples.
Kirjeldus
Received: March 1st, 2021 ; Accepted: June 7th, 2021 ; Published: June 16th, 2021 ; Correspondence: lauma.busa@lu.lv
Märksõnad
barley, organic farming, grain, principal component analysis, stable isotopes, stable isotope ratio mass spectrometry, articles