Spectrophotometric determination of micro amounts of aluminium in plant material with 8-hydroxyquinoline

Abstract

The 8-hydroxyquinoline method, previously found to be more satisfactory than the aluminon method for the analysis of soil extracts, has been examined for its suitability for determining aluminium in plant tissues. An initial extraction with chloroform of the diethyldithiocarbamate complexes of the large amounts of heavy metals found in plant material has been devised. The resulting method was tested on synthetic solutions and compared with emission-spectrochemical procedures in the analysis of plant materials.

The lower limit for reliable determination by the proposed method corresponds to 4 p.p.m. of aluminium in the dried plant tissue. At this lower limit, the following interfering elements in the tissue at the percentage concentrations indicated are tolerated in the method: copper, 0·005; zinc, 0·030; iron, 0·030; manganese, 0·10; phosphorus, 0·20; and calcium, 4·0. For tissue containing 20 p.p.m. of aluminium, or more, at least five times these amounts are tolerated.