LC/MS Platform Detects 510 Pesticides in Complex Food Samples

Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc introduced an application note demonstrating how the Thermo Scientific Exactive LC/MS system, powered by Orbitrap technology, can be used to perform nontargeted and accurate screening, detection and separation of 510 pesticides at low ppb levels in just 12 minutes.

To comply with stricter food safety standards the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommended the revocation or modification of thousands of uses of pesticides following a 2007 review of 9,721 pesticide tolerances. Overall, tighter regulations require that companies worldwide require sensitive, fast and cost-effective instrumentation for high-throughput screening of multi-class pesticides in food.

Leveraging the proven mass analyser technology of the Thermo Scientific Orbitrap platform, the Exactive™ mass spectrometer delivers ultra high resolution and accurate mass data to enable the rigorous and fast characterisation of analytes in complex matrices with the advantage of stable and reproducible accurate mass.

To evaluate the applicability of this technique to complex food samples, scientists examined pesticides extracted from a spiked spinach matrix that represented a broad spectrum of chemical classes. Experimental results showed that the Accela™ U-HPLC system improved chromatographic resolution, speed and sensitivity. The scientists achieved even faster, higher-throughput analysis of challenging samples when they coupled Accela with an Exactive mass spectrometer. The high-resolution provided by the Exactive LC/MS platform (up to 100,000 FWHM) facilitates the accurate mass confirmation of all compounds, including isobaric compounds
in complex samples.

The application note also demonstrates that the Exactive with Accela offers excellent linearity in detector response over the range of 1-250 ppb, with correlation coefficients for the majority of pesticides greater than 0.99.