Abstract: In this study, the contents of 25 mineral elements in Tan sheep meat and environmental samples from Yanchi county in Ningxia were determined by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). The characteristics of these mineral elements were further analyzed by principal component analysis (PCA), cluster analysis (CA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) in order to screen for geographical traceability indicators. A discriminant model was established and verified based on the mineral element profiles of both meat and environmental samples. For meat samples, the mineral elements selected were Cr, Ni, Cu, Rb, Sr, Mo, Ba, Mn and Sn, and the overall accuracy rates of back substitution test and cross validation were 97.50% and 95.00%, respectively. For environmental samples, the mineral elements selected were K, P, Ca, Na, Mg, V, Ni, Zn, Ba, Rb, Cr, Sr and Fe. and the overall accuracy rates of back substitution test and cross validation were 93.80% and 97.50%, respectively. The traceability indexes common to Tan sheep meat and the environment were Cr, Ni, Rb, Sr, and Ba. The overall accuracy rates of back substitution test and cross validation were 96.30% and 95.00%, respectively. This study indicated that the selected mineral elements were effective in identifying the geographical origin of random Tan sheep meat samples, and could be used as indicators for fingerprint geographical traceability of Yanchi Tan sheep meat.

Key words: Tan sheep meat from Yanchi; mineral elements; geographical traceability