Effects of pre- and post-harvest factors on the selected elements contents in fruit juices

Pre- and post-harvest factors determine the levels of the selected risk elements in100% fruit juices. The juices samples closely followed the Brix international reference values. Fruit juices presented the following order of the elements mean concentrations: cadmium (1.597 μg/l), chromium (2.767 μg/l), lead (20.75 μg/l), nickel (73.37 μg/l), zinc (545.9 μg/l), and iron (1792 μg/l), measured by AAS. The pre-harvest factors (origin, fruit, and agriculture) and the post-harvest factors (blending, packaging, conservation, pasteurisation, and process) were evaluated according to the manufacturers information and were correlated with the elements concentrations of fruit juices. A strong relationship was detected between the fruit species used for the juice production (i.e. pre-harvest factor) and their elements concentrations. Furthermore, multiple correspondence analysis was used for reducing the data dimension by grouping the factors. The zinc concentration was detected as a potential proxy for the identification of the fruit juices manufacturing process.