Comparison of a microwave digestion system to other digestion methods for plant tissue analysis

Abstract

Most digestion procedures for the preparation for plant tissue for elemental analysis are often very laborious. Elemental contents of plant tissue prepared by microwave digestion were compared to those obtained by conventional dry ashing and sulfuric acid‐hydrogen peroxide wet digestion. All three digestion methods produced comparable quantitative values for the elements P, K, Ca, Mg, Fe, Mn, Zn, and Cu for all plant materials used. Thus, the microwave digestion technique was shown to be a viable rapid method for digesting relatively small numbers of samples prior to elemental analysis.