Application of two- and multiway chemometric strategies for describing elementomic changes in pepper plants exposed to cadmium stress by multielement determination.

The objective of this work was to evaluate elemental changes in pepper exposed to Cd stress through different chemometric tools. For this purpose, pepper plants were grown under five different treatments with different Cd concentrations in the nutrient solution. Considering the hypothesis that pepper plants exposed to Cd stress during growth undergo changes in the macro- and microelemental distribution in leaves, stems, and roots, principal component analysis (PCA) and parallel factor (PARAFAC) analysis were applied to compare bidirectional and multivariate chemometric strategies to assess elemental changes in pepper plants.