Abstract
In food analysis, a trend towards on-site testing of quality and safety parameters is emerging. So far, on-site testing has been mainly explored by miniaturized optical spectroscopy and ligand-binding assay approaches such as lateral flow immunoassays and biosensors. However, for the analysis of multiple parameters at regulatory levels, mass spectrometry (MS) is the method of choice in food testing laboratories. Thanks to recent developments in ambient ionization and upcoming miniaturization of mass analyzers, (trans)portable mass spectrometry may be added to the toolkit for on-site testing and eventually compete with multiplex immunoassays in mixture analysis. In this study, we preliminary evaluated a selection of recent ambient ionization techniques for their potential in simplified testing of selected food contaminants such as pesticides, veterinary drugs, and natural toxins, aiming for a minimum in sample preparation while maintaining acceptable sensitivity and robustness. Matrix-assisted inlet ionization (MAI), handheld desorption atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (DAPCI), transmission-mode direct analysis in real time (TM-DART), and coated blade spray (CBS) were coupled to both benchtop Orbitrap and compact quadrupole single-stage mass analyzers, while CBS was also briefly studied on a benchtop triple-quadrupole MS. From the results, it can be concluded that for solid and liquid sample transmission configurations provide the highest sensitivity while upon addition of a stationary phase, such as in CBS, even low μg/L levels in urine samples can be achieved provided the additional selectivity of tandem mass spectrometry is exploited.
Highlights
In food quality and safety control, traditional workflows comprise on-site sampling by food inspectors from authorities or industry, administration and transportation of the samples to centralized laboratories, pre-screening of the samples for target substances followed by confirmatory analysis in case of suspect results, and reporting and appropriate followup action in case of non-compliant samples
We evaluated transmission-mode direct analysis in real time (TM-DART) (Harding et al 2014)
Metolachlor, chlormequat, atrazine, and imazalil were obtained from LGC standards (Wessel, Germany); clenbuterol, salbutamol, salmeterol, formoterol, and higenamine were obtained from Witega (Berlin, Germany); zilpaterol was kindly provided by EURL (Berlin, Germany); stanozolol was obtained from NMI (Sydney, Australia); cortisol was obtained from Steraloids (Newport, RI, USA); levofloxacin, tetracycline dapsone, and 3-nitrobenzonitrile (3-NBN) were obtained from Sigma-Aldrich
Summary
In food quality and safety control, traditional workflows comprise on-site sampling by food inspectors from authorities or industry, administration and transportation of the samples to centralized laboratories, pre-screening of the samples for target substances followed by confirmatory analysis in case of suspect results, and reporting and appropriate followup action in case of non-compliant samples. Aiming for future coupling with portable mass spectrometry, some practical and analytical requirements for simplified ambient ionization techniques can be summarized as follows: (i) no vulnerable laser set-ups, (ii) no heavy gas cylinders, (iii) small footprint, (iv) low weight, (v) low power consumption, (vi) robustness, and (vii) acceptable analytical performance for pre-screening performance, i.e., a low risk of false-negative results. Based on these considerations, a few recent ambient ionization techniques were selected for their potential in simplified testing of food contaminants
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