Contents of inorganic elements in three real geranium herbs and the relevance to soil / 中国药学杂志

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To compare the contents of inorganic elements in geranium from three different sources and analyze the relevance to soil. METHODS: The contents of 16 kinds of inorganic elements in crude geranium and its soils from three different sources were determined. Statistical analysis was conducted by SPSS17.0 software. Characteristic spectra of medicinal inorganic element were established according to the element profiling. RESULTS: The contents of inorganic elements in crude drugs were positively correlated with those in the soil. One-way ANOVA and Kruskal Wallis test showed that except for Cu and Hg, the differences in the contents of the rest 14 inorganic elements had statistical significance. Bayes analysis showed that Fisher linear discriminant function could be used to identify crude geranium from three different sources. CONCLUSION: The contents of inorganic elements in geranium are mainly regulated by selective absorption from soil and there are significant differences among herbs from three different sources.