Effect of Topography on Maize Grains Elemental Profile: A Chemometric Approach

HEREDIA, JORGELINA Z.; MOLDES, CARLOS A.; GIL, RAÚL A.; CAMIÑA, JOSÉ

CURRENT ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY

BENTHAM SCIENCE PUBL LTD

Año: 2020 vol. 16

1573-4110

Background: The elemental composition of maize grains depends on the soil, land and environment characteristics where the crop grows. These effects are important to evaluate the availability of nutrients whose dynamic is complex, such as concentration of macro and micronutrients in soils, which can vary according to different topographies in next areas. There are scarce information is found about the influence of topographic characteristics (upland and lowland) where culture is developed with the mineral composition of crop products -in present case, maize seeds. On the other hand, the study of topographic effect on crops using multivariate analysis tools has not been reported.Objective: This paper assesses the effect of topographic conditions in plants, analyzing the mineral profiles in maize seeds obtained in two land conditions: uplands and lowlands.Material and methods: The mineral profile was performed by microwave plasma atomic emission spectrometry. Samples were collected in lowlands and uplands from cultivable lands of north-east of La Pampa province, Argentina.Results: Differentiation of maize seeds collected from both topographic areas was achieved by principal components analysis (PCA), cluster analysis (CA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA). PCA model based on mineral profile allowed to differentiate seeds from upland and lowlands by influence of Cr and Mg variables. A significant accumulation of Cr and Mg in seeds from lowlands was observed. Cluster analysis confirmed such grouping but also, linear discriminant analysis achieved a correct classification in both crops, showing the effect of topography on elemental profile.Conclusions: Multi-elemental analysis combined with chemometric tools was useful to assess the effect of topographic characteristics on crops.