Determination of major, minor and trace elements in Glyceric Macerates and Mother Tinctures and in the starting plant materials

Abstract

tGlyceric Macerates (GMs) and Mother Tinctures (MTs) are liquid preparations obtained from plant buds(for GMs) and flowers, leaves or roots (for MT) by extraction with a mixture of solvents. Their qual-ity depends on the quality of the plant materials and on the preparation procedures. In this work wedetermined the concentrations of major, minor and trace elements in buds, flowers and other plant com-ponents and in the GMs and MTs obtained from them by Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical EmissionSpectrometry (ICP-OES) after microwave mineralization. To the best of our knowledge, this procedurehas been applied for the first time here to the analysis of buds. We have taken into account spectralinterferences and other causes of errors. Analogies and differences with regard to the method reportedby European Pharmacopoeia for heavy metal determination in herbal drugs have been highlighted. Theexperimental results have been interpreted with chemometric techniques. No significant contamina-tion was detected during the manufacturing step. Element concentrations in GMs and MTs, taking intoaccount their daily dosages, are lower than acceptable intake levels