Levels of Essential Elements in Three Tef [Eragrostis Tef(Zucc.)Trotter] Varieties.
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Date
2009-07
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Addis Ababa Universty
Abstract
Tef, [Eragrostis tef(zucc.)Trotter] is an indigenous crop plant in Ethiopia. It provides
the most staple food-Enjera for most Ethiopians. An efficient wet digestion procedure
with the percentage recovery ranges from 85.66 to 105.22% (%R ± SD) was developed
for tef flour sample using standard addition (spiking) method. The optimal digestion
procedure allowed the use of acids with minimum volume leading to reduced blank
contamination, and lower detection limit. The levels of nine essential elements (Na, K,
Mg, Ca, Mn, Co, Cu, Zn &Fe) were determined by FAAS applying four point calibration
curve in the three most common and commercially available tef types (Red, Mixed and
White tef) collected from four mill houses in Arada sub city of Addis Ababa. The
observed average metal concentration in red, mixed and white tef respectively
are:Na(22.06 ± 1.46,25.68 ± 2.05,22.89 ± 1.42), K (215.81 ± 8.13, 219.23 ± 8.35,
205.59 ± 7.17), Mg (161.91 ± 7.76, 173.7 ± 8.89, 153.16 ± 9.45), Ca (178.54 ± 9.5,
168.64 ± 11.03, 180.7 ± 14.65), Mn (22.36 ± 0.15, 13.26 ± 0.029, 4.84 ± 0.044), Co
(6.20 ± 5.38, 5.21 ± 0.29, 7.89 ± 0.75), Cu (2.51 ± 0.30, 3.79 ± 0.1, 1.08 ± 0.075), Zn
(4.79 ± 10.7, 3.79 ± 0.1, 2.98 ± 0.12), and Fe (24.62 ± 1.07,20.05 ± 1.4, 15.95 ± 1.7)
mg/100g of dry weight. A statistical analysis of variance (ANOVA) using excel and
SPSS soft ware revealed that there is a significant difference between the mineral
content of the three tef types at 95% ( p ≤ 0.05) CL. Tukey pair wise comparisons
also confirmed this difference in mineral contents of the samples. Red tef has higher
essential metal contents followed by mixed tef. Further more, all the three-tef types
considered are rich in their mineral contents compared to maize, barely, sorghum,
wheat, kocho and bulla, hence tef could be suitable sources of dietary minerals.
Key words: Tef, Eragrostis tef, red tef, mixed tef , white tef, essential elements,
Flame Atomic Absorption spectrophotometer
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Keywords
Tef, Eragrostis tef, Red tef, Mixed tef, White tef, Essential elements, Flame Atomic Absorption spectrophotometer