Overview
Fattobene and colleagues measured 28 elements by ICP-OES in durum wheat whole seed and in the bran, semolina and flour milled from it, comparing varieties grown on organic and conventional plots at one experimental site in Marche, Italy. The aim was to tell the farming methods apart by elemental fingerprint. Tables 2 to 5 give mean, SD and range per product and farming method on a dry-weight basis.
Key numbers
- Whole seed cadmium: organic “0.029 ± 0.010” mg/kg, conventional “0.022 ± 0.007” mg/kg dry weight (Table 2, p. 5).
- Whole seed lead: organic “0.057 ± 0.018”, conventional “0.054 ± 0.025” mg/kg dry weight (Table 2).
- Semolina cadmium: organic “0.017 ± 0.006”, conventional “0.012 ± 0.004” mg/kg dry weight (Table 4, p. 8).
- Flour total arsenic: organic “0.063 ± 0.020”, conventional “0.103 ± 0.084” mg/kg dry weight (Table 5, p. 9).
Methods (brief)
Seeds were conditioned to 17% moisture and milled on a laboratory mill into bran (>560 µm), semolina (160 to 560 µm) and flour (≤160 µm). Samples were oven-dried, digested by microwave in nitric and hydrochloric acid, and read by ICP-OES against a five-point calibration. LOD and LOQ were computed by the instrument software and are given only in supplementary Table S1.
Evidence Fitness
A controlled single-site, single-season field experiment, not a market survey, with modest group sizes (13 to 19). No certified reference material or recovery is reported. Values are dry weight on laboratory-milled fractions. Durum seed, semolina and bran are a proxy for whole-wheat-pasta; the paper measures no pasta, so the thin page is not linked. Antimony and thallium were mostly below detection.