Studying the nitrate contamination in Parsley farms in Iran

The accumulation of nitrate in the agriculture products, especially vegetables, water and foods is one of those factors that exposes the people health and hygiene in particular the neonates to the risk. The purpose of present study is to examine the nitrate amount in the highly use plants, i.e. parsley at the vegetable farms of Dezful city. The sampling of the farms at third zone of Dezful was conducted randomly through three consecutive pickings from first, middle and last rows during morning. The samples was dried in an oven at 70°C and powdered by a mill. Next, a spectrophotometer device read their nitrates. In order to compare the mean and standard deviation, the nitrate concentration in the tested samples in the three zones was studied by employing Duncan test at 5% level using SPSS 18 package. The results showed that the highest nitrate amounts in the tested samples of the three farms were 10295 mg/kg of fresh weight in the parsley. Thus, there was no significant difference. All the parsley samples were beyond standard limit (500 mg/kg of fresh weight).