Nutrient Concentration of Agricultural Produce

In 2000, the Australian Commonwealth government commissioned an audit of the nation's natural resources - the National Land and Water Resources Audit (NLWRA). As part of the Audit, an assessment was made of farm-gate nutrient balances (ie. the net result of nutrient imports and exports from agricultural production) across the nation. In order to calculate nutrient exports, project leaders Drs Doug Reuter and Geoff Judson undertook an extensive review of the nutrient concentration of a wide range of agricultural products. The nutrient concentration data may prove useful in determining nutrient balances for other situations.  You can access the collected information on nutrient concentration through this website in one of two ways.

OPTION 1.  The final list of figures used to calculate nutrient balances for the Audit is available for download as a PDF file by clicking here*.  These figures represent typical values for Australian produce.

OPTION 2.  The much more extensive reference database which was used to compile the final figures contains over 1200 entries. You can access the information in this database by selecting from the drop-down menus below. 

 

Select the type of produce:
 

  IMPORTANT NOTES: 

  • The nutrient concentrations in the database are reported on an "as received" or  fresh weight (FW) basis. To convert to an oven-dry (OD) basis use the reported moisture content where available. 

  • Where references reported protein concentration of produce, these were converted to N concentration using the following formulae:  for wheat, N concentration = protein concentration / 5.7 and for all other species, N concentration = protein concentration / 6.25.  However, please note that nitrogen concentration of wheat and barley grain vary markedly with region, cultivar and seasonal conditions.

  • Where the edible portion percentage (EP%) is reported, EP% = [edible mass (analysed) / purchased mass] x 100

  • To access the full details of reference sources from each table, follow the hyperlink in the "Reference Sources" column heading. 

  • If you wish to cite this database use the following format: "Reuter, D and Judson, G. (2003) Nutrient Concentration of Agricultural Produce, viewed (insert current date), <http://www.potash-info.com/research/nutrientconc/nutrrientconc.htm>".

  • The authors gratefully acknowledge the support they received from the many Australian nutritionists who supplied either their published or unpublished nutrient concentration data.
 

If you would like more information on the National Land and Water Resources Audit, or to view the results of the nutrient balance assessment, visit the Audit Atlas website at www.nlwra.gov.au.

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