In this respect, there are points of similarities and difference in the methodology applied by Niro et al. (2017), Bellaio, Carnevale & Bona 2014, Bertoldi et al. (2018), and Pedro et al. (2019) and the methods used for determination and analysis of inorganic minerals in the current Maltese goji cultivation experiment. For instance, the use of concentrated nitric acid was used for digestion of samples with the least concentration of HNO3 used in any of the experiments capping at 65% indicating that concentrated nitric acid is a common choice during the digestion of goji samples in determination and analysis of mineral elements. Conversely, mineral determination in the current Maltese goji cultivation used 5% HNO3 solution, indicating that there is a considerable difference in the concentration of HNO3 used within the current experiment and those indicated in other studies. Similarly, the discussed projects exhibit similarity in the recurring descriptions of using mineralised goji samples and the addition of ultrapure distilled water so that ash volumes can be increased to the desired levels during analysis. However, after the addition of distilled water, other researchers failed to use vortexing for homogenisation of the mixture, while vortexing was used in the current Maltese goji cultivation experiment. Additionally, the use of ICP-MS is also a recurring theme in all the experiments during the analysis of hard metal elements such as cadmium and lead (Niro et al. 2017; Bellaio, Carnevale & Bona 2014; Bertoldi et al. 2018; Pedro et al. 2019). On the other hand, the analysis of mineral elements in Maltese-grown goji berries in the current experiment was performed using a different instrument, MP-AES. Additionally, other researchers failed to mention the use of analysis software used to analyse the readings while the current experiment on goji berries cultivated in Malta implemented the use of pre-set templates on the Agilent MP-Expert Software.