The Effect of Potassium Citrate and Tartrate as Chelating Agents on the Removal of Lead from Rice in the Cooking Process

Nowadays, the contamination of rice with heavy metals is one of the problems facing humanity. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of soaking and cooking in the presence of chelating agents such as GRAS including, tartrate potassium and potassium citrate (200 mg/kg) on the removal of lead from three types of imported rice (India, Thailand and the United States). Atomic absorption measurements were performed in three replications and the difference in mean of 0.05 was done by Duncan test. The highest and lowest amount of lead was measured in Thai and Indian rice, 7337.33 and 380.63 μg/kg, respectively. The process of soaking and cooking with the salt of tartrate and citrate reduced lead by more than 98.5, 99.6 and 99.05% in Indian, Thai and American rice, respectively. The effect of the cooking process compared with soaking had a more significant effect on lead removal (P<0.05). Tartrate had a greater effect on the removal of this heavy metal than citrate (P<0.05), and soaking and cooking treatment could more significantly reduce the amount of lead. The sensory evaluation of samples showed that there was no statistically significant difference between treatments (P<0.05).