Measurement of Selenium compounds in malt, barley and beer

Human populations in parts of Asia have diets deficient in selenium. Beer is ubiquitously consumed throughout Asia and is considered an ideal beverage for selenium enrichment. Joe White Malting in collaboration with a large Korean Brewery wishes to produce selenium enriched barley/malt that can be used to bre selenium enriched beer. However, selenium chemistry is complex and plants produce ma number of selenium compounds when exposed to selenium. Understanding the uptake and toxicity of selenium requires an assessment of its chemical form. At present, no reliable procedures for assessment of the chemical forms of selenium are available. We propose to develop techniques based on high pressure liquid chromatography-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry that have been successfully used previously in our laboratory to determine arsenic, antimony and mercury compounds in foodstuffs. The importance of this work is that the selenium compounds present in food are largely unknown and the establishment of these procedures will allow us to determine the forms of selenium in a wide range of materials which will allow the evaluation of their nutritional benefits.