The liberalization of the global trade and the fact that the consumers are more and more demanding regarding food quality, safety and traceability are changing the so far national quantity-oriented food production into an international quality-oriented food market, where commodities, production areas, production chains and brands compete with each other.

One important aspect in producing quality plant based food products is that the products contain adequate amounts of bioavailable mineral nutrients such as Fe, Zn, Se, Mg, Ca, and I that are essential for normal functioning of human organism and are often lacking in our diet. At the same time the amounts of hazardous elements such as Cd, Pb and Hg should be strictly controlled. For this purpose it is essential to understand the basic processes in mineral uptake, transport and speciation in plants. Modern spectroscopy techniques in combination with improved multivariate statistic methodologies provide a novel platform for assessing basic information on the mentioned mechanisms as well as food quality, safety and traceability.

In the seminar selected case studies dealing with the uptake and speciation of Fe, Hg and Se will be presented, together with methodologies for assessing food provenance.