Dried biomass of green algae and its matrix matching with green parts of higher plants

Literature data for the content of matrix elements in dry biomass of green algae have been compared with those for green parts of higher plants. The data were evaluated by means of frequency histograms and box-and-whisker plots. With two exceptions (Fe, P), the spread of the data values for a given element was broader for higher plants than for algae. Distribution of the data was asymmetric, in most cases with long right-hand tails. All outliers found (average 5.6% for algae, 9.1% for higher plants) lay above the bulk of the data values. In all cases, there was either partial or (mostly) complete overlap of the ranges for algae with those for higher plants. While the question of matrix-matching of reference materials prepared from algal biomass with samples from green parts of higher plants can exhaustively be answered only after a similar comparison of the composition of matrix compounds, the content of the main matrix elements is certainly not doubtful.