Regional discrimination of oysters using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy

It is well known that eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) are bio-indicators and can be used to determine the elemental composition of an estuarine system. Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has been successfully used for the detect of trace elements in various environmental matrices. In this work, LIBS was used to characterize oysters collected from a total of six sites in two different coastal estuarine reserves - Grand Bay, Mississippi (4 sites) and Apalachicola Bay, Florida (2 sites). Multiple ionic and neutral elemental species of Al, C, Ca, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Na, Si, Sr, and Zn were observed through LIBS spectral analysis of the harvested oysters. Principal component analysis, discriminant function analysis, and hierarchical cluster analysis were applied to a data matrix of identified elemental lines resulting in intra-and inter-site clustering of the oysters according to their geographical origin.