In order to identify and characterize the fibers of sheep wool, microw
ave digestion under pressure was used. The main purpose of this work w
as to provide a method for estimating the origin and quality of wool f
ibers and to set up a correlation between these and the microelement c
ontents. The results obtained so far on 8 samples show good reproducib
ility and allo wed us to set up a system of classifying the quality of
wool fibers. All measurements were carried out by using the ICP-AES s
pectrometric method.