MULTIELEMENT ANALYSIS IN RICE GRAINS BY INSTRUMENTAL NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS

Over 114 countries in the world grow rice and more than 50 countries have an annual rice production of 100,000 tonnes or more. Asian farmers produce about 90 % of the global total rice production. Generally, there are two most common varieties of rice; cultivated and hill rice. Nowadays a lot of agriculture land is contaminated with toxic elements owing to the use of sludge or municipal compost, pesticides, fertilizers and emissions from municipal waste incinerators, car exhausts, residues from metalliferous mines, and smelting industries. The distribution and concentration of several toxic elements in grains particularly rice has lately become a big concern. A study to determine the concentrations of some elements in a few varieties of rice in our local market using Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis has been performed by Waste and Environmental Technology Division, Malaysian Nuclear Agency. A total of 15 elements were measured. The method was validated by analysing the Standard Reference Material SRM-1568a (Rice Flour) and SRM-1573a (Tomato Leaves) of NIST. The measured concentrations of major and minor elements were analysed in terms of the average intake of nutrient content and comparison of several toxic elements to other studied values