Mineral Contents of Some Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Growing in Eastern Morocco

Many Moroccan plants are known to be of potential medicinal value and are used in herbal medicine. Wormwood (Artemisia herba alba), Lavander (Lavandula dentata), Rosemary (Rosmarinus tournefortii), Thyme (Thymus vulgaris) used as plant material in this study. The goal of this work was to analyse minor and major mineral contents of seven sample of medicinal and aromatic plants collected from two Moroccan regions and the soils in which they grew in 2007. They were established by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). The samples were composed of Al, Ca, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, P, Ba, Cd, Pb and Zn. The highest mineral concentration were measured between 2.74-7.91 Al, 16.31-37.25 Ca, 0.362.70 Fe, 17.72 K, 3.09-6.83 Mg and 0.39-1.84 P % .The heavy metal Cd and Pb contents in samples collected from a traffic area may be due to automobile fumes. These results may be useful for the evaluation of the quality of consumat aromatic pants.