| dc.description.abstract | Water spinach (Ipomoea aquatic Forsk.) is a food for human beings and animals. It is rich
in minerals, protein, dietary fibre, with high moisture content. The work was undertaken to
determine contents of K, Ca, Mg, Na & P in the stems, leaves and petioles of water spinach. Atomic
absorption spectrometry (AAS) and Inductive Couple Plasma (ICP) were used to determine
concentration of nutrients, where one way ANOVA was applied to analyse if there is any significant
differences in the macronutrient contents amongst the leaves, petioles and stems of the water
spinach. If any of the results showed significant differences, Turkey post-hoc HSD test (p<0.05%)
was adopted to separate the means. In addition, Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient Test was
conducted between the plant macronutrients samples (leaves + stem + petioles combined) and water
macronutrients data run to determine their relationships. In addition, purpose of this study is to
highlight to the public which parts of the plant should be consumed and also to indicate the
relationship of Water Spinach with its growing medium. The K concentration was higher than the
other elements and maximum concentration was in petioles (432+27.45 mg∙L-1) and stems
(424.60+14.19 mgL-1). The element with the least concentration was Na (3.10+0.40 mgL-1), in the
petiole. There was no difference in Mg content in leaves, petioles and stems (avg. 28.55+1.61 mgL1). High amounts of Ca (150+0.10 mgL-1) and low amounts of P (41.11+0.01 mgL-1) were in p | en_US |
