ESR detection of irradiated carob pods (Ceratoniasiliqua L) and its dosimetric feature

Abstract

Un-irradiated carob powder exhibited a weak ESR singlet at g = 2.0041 +/- 0.0006 with peak-to-peak linewidth (Delta H-pp) of 0.33 +/- 0.01 mT. Irradiated carob powder exhibited an ESR spectrum consisting many resonance lines and similar to ESR spectrum of sugar in all aspects. A linear function of the absorbed radiation dose was found to describe best the dose-response curves of the ESR signal intensity I-pp. It is concluded that due to the similarity of carob powder ESR spectrum to the irradiated sugar and the fact that it is widely consumed, carob powder has the potential to be used as a retrospective and/or accidental dosimetric material.