Trace elemental determination of metals in wine yards and wine leaves from middle Rhine Valley by neutron activation analysis

SOUND, IRIS; SOLDATI, ANALIA L.; NASCIMIENTO JÄHNKE, SAMARA; VICENTE VILAS, VÍCTOR; BAUMANN, WOLFRAM

Río de Janeiro, Brasil

Conferencia; Nuclear Analytical Methods in Life Sciences (NAMLS08); 2005

As the middle Rhine valley between the cities Bingen and Koblenz is a UNESCO world heritage the question arises how to conserve this precious landscape. The landscape is influenced by the wine cultivation for over 2000 years. Currently it is very difficult to keep this cultural scene, because the wine cultivation is in retreat. There are different possibilities to free the area: by conventional methods as removal of bushes, fire or pasture. If one wants to use pasture to free the scene you must by sure that no hazardous residues are In the ground. In 2004 two incidents occurred that in one case cows and in the other goats died in a pasture area which was formerly used for wine cultivation. The death of both herbivores was caused by selenium deficiency. This can occur when a high zinc concentration is in the diet. So the aim of this investigation was to elucidate the metal contents in the ground and in the animal diet. It could be found the a quite high concentration of zinc was found in the ground. It was also found cobalt, selenium and chromium. Only very low concentrations of selenium was found in the animal diet, but it was also found zinc at elevated concentrations. So it is quite possible that the death was caused by high concentrations of zinc and the selenium deficiency in the diet. As pasture of an area is a very cost effective method to free an area the herbivores must be controlled closely and examined for any deficiencies. Next studies will be focused on the zinc binding in the leaves by proteins. Further used methods will be gel electrophoresis and ESI-MS analysis.