CARBON AND NITROGEN ISOTOPES ON WHEAT FROM CÓRDOBA PROVINCE, ARGENTINA: IMPLICATIONS FOR PROVENANCE STUDIES

ERNESTO GALLEGOS; HÉCTOR OSTERA; MARIANA C. CAGNONI; DANIEL WUNDERLIN; PILAR PERAL GARCÍA

Brasilia, Brasil

Simposio; VII SSAGI - South American Symposium on Isotope Geology; 2010

The current international food market and consumers demand new and reliable tools, independent of custody chains or documentation, for the characterization and origin certification of food commodities. These new tools aim to provide consumers the security they require with regard to quality and safety of the food they consume and contribute to the protection of producers against potential frauds. The same concerning appears when a commodities-exporting country, like Argentina in this case, has different producing areas with large differences in the quality of those goods. The evolving field of investigation known as Food Forensics use geochemical tools (both elemental and isotopic) to achieve a fingerprint for food commodities that represent the provenance of them. In this short paper the authors seek to achieve preliminary isotopic fingerprint identification for the wheat from Córdoba Province. Most samples come from Totoral Department, in Córdoba Province, although some also come from the departments of Río Primero and Colón. In these locations the wheat production is much extended. In terms of the environmental variables that control the growth of this crop, annual precipitations in the area are 600 to 700 mm and mean annual temperature is 17° C. The underlying rocks are predominantly magmatic-acid.