Vitamina C, carotenóides, minerais e metais pesados em frutas orgânicas e convencionais

• Autor(a) principal: Cardoso, Pollyanna Costa
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: LOCUS Repositório Institucional da UFV
• Texto Completo: http://locus.ufv.br/handle/123456789/2689
• topic: Frutas orgânicas; Frutas convencionais; Vitamina C; Carotenóides; Metais pesados; Organic fruits; Conventional fruits; Vitamin C; Carotenoids; Heavy metals; CNPQ::CIENCIAS DA SAUDE::NUTRICAO

The concern about the presence of pesticides in food and their possible hazards to the health has leading many consumers to choose the consumption of organic food. The organic agriculture is a production system based on environmental preservation, on agro biodiversity, on biological cycles and on man s quality of life, aiming the social, environmental and economic sustainability. Fruits have a high content of nutrients, like vitamin C and carotenoids, that have drawing attention due to their antioxidant potential and their role in the prevention of chronic diseases, besides of provitamin A carotenoids act in the prevention of hypovitaminosis A. Fruits provide minerals, important elements that participate of physiologic and biochemical vital activities, whose content is variable in food, that can suffer influence of growing conditions. The form of growing, the use of fertilizer, the water and air contamination can influence on the content of heavy metals in fruits; these accumulate in the organism, leading to deleterious effects to human health. Studies that evaluate the impact of the agronomic production system on the content of nutrients and toxic elements in food are rare. The present study investigated and compared the content of vitamin C (ascorbic acid AA and dehydroascorbic acid DHA), carotenoids (lycopene, α and β-carotene), minerals (Ca, Fe, Mg, Mn, Cu, Cr, Se, Zn, Mo, Na, K, P) and heavy metals (Ni, Pb, Cd and Al) in Palmer mango, Rama Forte persimmon, Olivier acerola and Oso Grande strawberry produced by the organic and conventional system. Vitamin C and carotenois analysis was carried out by High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). The quantification of the content of minerals and heavy metals was carried out by Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectrometry (ICP-AES). Acerola and mango showed the largest content of AA e β-carotene, respectively. Conventional persimmon, strawberry and acerola showed the largest content of DHA, AA and β-carotene, respectively. Organic mango presented the largest content of Cu, Zn and PB, and the conventional one, of Cr; organic persimmon presented the largest content of Cu, Zn and PB, and the conventional one, of Mg, P, Na and K; conventional acerola presented the largest content of Ca, Fe, Mn, Mo, Al and Ni; and organic strawberry, the largest content of Mo and Al. The organic form of growing didn t confirm the superiority of its nutritional quality for all the analyzed fruits, nor provided fruits free of heavy metals. However, there s a need of larger attention to the adverse effects to the human health and to the environment caused by the conventional growing conducted improperly. All the analyzed fruits, both organic as conventional, must be consumed daily by population in the recommended portions, since they are excellent sources of vitamin C, help to supply nutritional adequacy of vitamin A and minerals, and present low contents of heavy metals.