NITRATE CONTENT AS EXPORT CONSTRAIN OF INDONESIAN VEGETABLES TO EUROPE

Abstract

Vegetable quality is determined by the physical properties, chemistry, color, and
taste. Since increased public awareness of health, their demand on food quality has also
increased. Chemical properties of vegetables include: level of nitrate, pesticide residue and
heavy metal content. The purpose of this paper is to provide information to Indonesian
vegetables stakeholder, the European markets impose strict conditions on levels of nitrate
vegetables. The method used is the study of literature from a variety of credible sources. In
the human’s stomach is reduced nitrate to nitrite, then nitrite reacts with amines to form
nitrosamine compound. Nitrosamine is known as a very potential carcinogenic compound,
with risk of 90%. Statistically, 72.4% of daily nitrate intake originated from vegetables,
equal to 35.7 mg/day. Besides forms nitrosamine, nitrite couse methemoglobinamie (baby
blue syndrome). Nitrate is very serious threat to human health, so that the WHO limit the
maximum daily nitrate intake do not exceed 220 mg (Scharpf and Wehrmann, 1991). To
protect their citizen against nitrate hazard, European government are agreed to limit the
maximum nitrate content in vegetables. Each species of vegetable and Country has different
nitrate limit. Indonesian’s vegetable contain high nitrate level and difficult to reduce
because there is no technology have been developed to quantify N supply to achieve low
nitrate content. Growers in developed countries (Europe, USA, Japan, and Canada) apply
N-mineral Metode to maintain nitrogen supply and nitrate content. Wijaya (2012) have
analyzed 5 species of vegetables (spinach, pachoy, cabage, lettuce and chinakol) resfectivly
contain 6.427, 3.915, 1.847, 1.553, and 704 mg/kg FS). Acording to these nitrate content
and nitrate limiting role of European Countries, very hard for Indonesia to export
Indonesian vegetables to Europe.