Abstract: The contents of 20 elements in 15 cultivars of naked barley, including calcium, potassium, magnesium, natrium, phosphorus, sulfur, barium, copper, ferrum, lithium, manganece, molybdenum, nickel, strontium, titanium, zinc, aluminum, arsenic, chromium and lead were determined by ICP-AES to conduct a cluster analysis. No significant mutual interference was found among the tested elements. The recovery of the method varied from 95.4% to 101.2%, with a RSD of 1.2% to 5.3% (n = 7) and meanwhile the method showed high accuracy and precision. The 15 naked barley cultivars were all rich in minerals but with a significant difference, and the major ones are K, P, Mg, Ca, Na, S, Fe, Zn, Mn, Al and Cu. In terms of the contents of the 20 elements, these naked barley cultivars were clustered into three groups: green, red and white. Green and red naked barleys resembled each other highly, and white naked barley presented differences in quality. Cluster analysis further showed that trace elements in naked barley were considerably related to cultivars rather than geographic origins.

Key words: naked barley, inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES), elements, cluster analysis