EVALUATION OF THE CONTENT OF ESSENTIAL MICROELEMENTS IN THE HERB OF CICHORIUM INTYBUS L. GROWING IN THE ORENBURG REGION

Relevance. It is of interest to search for new plant sources of essential trace elements. It is topical to study the content in plants of transitional mi-croelements of the IV period, which are part of the enzyme systems of the human body – Cu, Zn, Fe, Mn, Ni, Co, Cr. A promising source of microele-ments is the herb of Cichorium intybus L. It should be noted that the accumulation of microelements in raw materials may depend on their content in the soil, on the nature of the interaction between microelements. For this reason, it was relevant to study the content of essential microelements in chicory herb growing in various territories of the Orenburg region, and in the soil of these territories. The purpose of the work: to evaluate the content of essential microelements in the herb of Cichorium intybus L., growing in the Tyulgansky, Ponomarevsky, Buzuluksky, Sharlyksky and Sakmarsky districts of the Orenburg region, and in the soil of these areas. Material and methods. Herb of Cichorium intybus L., collected in July 2021 in the Central (Tulgansky, Sakmarsky districts) and in the Western Oren-burg region (Ponomarevsky, Buzuluksky, Sharlyksky districts). Determination of the content of trace elements was carried out by atomic absorption spectrometry. Statistica 10.0 software package (StatSoft, Inc.) was used for statistical processing. Results. Analysis of the content of essential microelements in the herb of Cichorium intybus L. showed that the maximum content of Mn, Co and Cr was noted in the herb of chicory collected in the Buzuluksky district, Cu and Zn – in the raw material of the Sharlyksky district, Ni – in the raw material of the Tyulgansky district, Fe – in the raw material of Buzuluksky and Tulgansky districts. An analysis of the content of essential microelements in the soil found that the highest concentrations of Mn, Co, Fe, Zn and Cu were noted in the soil of the Buzuluksky district, Ni and Cr – in the soil of the Tyulgansky district. Conclusion. Thus, the established differences in the content of essential microelements in the herb of Cichorium imtybus L., collected in the Orenburg region, may be due to differences in the content of these microelements in the soil, the phenomena of antagonism, synergism, and are taken into ac-count when choosing raw materials containing the highest concentrations of microelements.