Characterization of Three Berry Standard Reference Materials for Nutrients

Abstract

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been working with the National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements to produce Standard Reference Materials (SRMs) of interest to analysts of dietary supplements. Some of these SRMs are traditional foods including SRM 3281 Cranberry (Fruit), SRM 3282 Low-Calorie Cranberry Juice Cocktail, and SRM 3287 Blueberry (Fruit), which have been characterized for nine nutritional elements and sugars. The blueberries have also been characterized for proximates, two water-soluble vitamins, and amino acids. These new materials are intended for use in method development and validation as well as for quality assurance and traceability when assigning values to in-house control materials. Foods can be difficult to analyze because of matrix effects. With the addition of these three new SRMs, it is now possible to more closely match controls to matrices and analyte levels for fruit and vegetable test samples. Several nutritional elements in these three SRMs are present at lower levels than those in other food-matrix SRMs.

Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) in a refugee context in East Africa: Kitchen gardening helps with mineral provision

“…Since no certified reference material (CRM) is available for okra, the validity and reliability of the analytical results were ensured by determining the elemental concentration in Cranberry fruit standard reference material (NIST-3281) in the same way as the samples. Several studies have validated the accuracy of ICP-based methods for determination of minerals using this CRM [ 33 , 66 , 67 ]. The certificate concentrations considerably agreed with the measurement concentrations and no significant differences were observed between these values, demonstrating the accuracy of the analytical methodology used in the present study.…”

Optimization and validation of an inductively coupled atomic emission spectrometry method for macro- and trace element determination in berry fruit samples

“…Standard addition curves obtained from berry samples spiked at different concentration levels (0.4 mg L À1 to 1.6 mg L À1 , except for Al, Ca, Fe, Pb, Mg and Na, for which the spiked levels were from 0.04 mg L À1 to 0.16 mg L À1 ) were compared with calibration lines established from multi-elemental standards. 30 The matrix effect was calculated by eqn (1):…”