Abstract
Cultured pearls are formed in pearl sacs comprising epithelial cells transplanted into mother-of-pearl. The formation mechanism is complicated and is still not fully understood. Previous studies have shown that the pearl formation is influenced by aquaculture environment and physiological activity of shellfish. The elemental compositions of seawater and freshwater pearls are significantly different. In this work, we used the particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) technique to perform elemental analysis of six types of pearls: ordinary and blue Akoya pearls, black-, gold-, and white-lipped oyster pearls, and freshwater Biwako pearl. We investigate the influence of trace elements in aquaculture environments on formation of mother-of-pearl or color. The Mn/Sr or Fe/Sr ratio for the freshwater pearl was found to be significantly higher than that for the seawater pearl. Comparing the sweater pearls, the gold-lipped oyster pearl has high value of Mn/Sr ratio. The Fe/Sr and Cu/Sr ratios for two Akoya pearls harvested from the Sea of Japan are relatively high compared with black-, gold-, and white-lipped oyster pearls from the South Sea.
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