Ultimate composition of natural wormwood in Voronezh region

Studies of the ultimate composition of wild-growing raw material are relevant due to the high efficacy and bioavailability of organometallic forms contained in plants. The available information on the abundance of elements in the medicinal plant raw material (Voronezh region) showed that studies were carried out mainly on several elements. It prevented from determining the complete chemical composition of plants and describing the accumulation of the entire mineral elements complex. The purpose of the paper is to study how macro and trace elements are accumulated in natural wormwood in Voronezh region. Materials and Methods. Raw material procurement was carried out during the blooming in the Voronezh State Nature Biosphere Reserve. The method of mass spectrometry was used to study the trace element composition of the samples, ELAN-DRC mass spectrometer. Results. The authors revealed that the trace element content was 4.4 %, 59 elements were determined. Macro elements made up 96.03 % of the total elemental composition of wormwood. Potassium (>25 mg/g) and calcium (>10 mg/g) were the main macro elements. Essential trace elements made up 3.49 % of the total wormwood complex. Among them, silicon (>1.2 mg/g) and iron (>0.1 mg/g) ranked the largest. The content of normalized heavy metals and arsenic in wormwood satisfied the regulatory requirements. Lead, mercury, cadmium and arsenic accounted for 0.0017 % of the total raw material mineral complex. The proportion of toxic and understudied elements in the total mineral wormwood complex was 0.48 %. The highest content was noted for aluminum (135.6 pg/g), rubidium (27.66 pg/g), strontium (24.95 pg/g), barium (11.98 pg/g), and titanium (9.52 pg/g). It was noted that wormwood also accumulated phosphorus, potassium, copper, zinc, cadmium, molybdenum, calcium, magnesium, nickel, arsenic, rubidium, tin and strontium from the soil.