Recently, the Agro-product Processing Quality and Safety Prevention Research Team, Institute of Food Science and Technology (IFST), Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has reported novel data processing strategy based on liquid chromatography coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry platforms. The proposed strategies have been published in Journal of Hazardous Materials (IF=14.224, Q1) with the title “A novel calibration strategy based on isotopic distribution for high-throughput quantitative analysis of pesticides and veterinary drugs using LC-HRMS”.

Background: The use of pesticides and veterinary drugs has become inevitable in intensive agricultural and livestock production systems to secure sufficient food for the continuously growing population. However, the frequent irresponsible use of pesticides and veterinary drugs leads to their accumulation in the consumed vegetables, fruits and meats, posing potential harm to human health. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to develop accurate analytical methods for a comprehensive detection and quantification of these residues in foods.

Scope and approach: Liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS) has become the tool of choice for the quantitative analysis of diverse chemical hazardous materials in foods at ultra-low levels due to its high sensitivity and high-throughput capability. The preparation of calibration curves is the key to develop an accurate quantitation LC-MS/MS method. However, there are several time-consuming, labor-intensive, and error-prone steps during the preparation of multi-sample external calibration curve, which is the most used quantitative strategy. And how to proposed a new quantitative strategy to meet the demand for high-throughput and accurate quantitative analysis of large number of hazardous materials in foods is very important.

Key findings and conclusions: Herein, a novel isotopologue multipoint calibration (IMC) strategy, was proposed and demonstrated for the simultaneous quantitation of 120 pesticides and 83 veterinary drugs in foods and surface water using LC-HRMS. In this strategy, the natural isotopic distribution was used to generate external calibration curves, eliminating the need of analyst’s adjustment and many sets of chemical standard solutions required in external calibration curves. Additionally, this strategy was comprehensively validated, and the results indicated this strategy had better performance in both accuracy and precision, fully meeting the requirements for the quantitative analysis. Interestingly, for the samples with high concentration beyond the upper limit of quantitation, the IMC strategy could avoid samples dilution by monitoring the less abundant isotopic channels. Furthermore, the IMC method was successfully applied in foods and surface water samples. In conclusion, we present a promising LC-HRMS strategy for the accurate quantitation of small molecules, which has a potential application in foods and environmental analysis.

Professor Yi Li and associate professor Shupeng Yang are the co-corresponding authors, and student Feifei Sun and Haiguang Tan is the co-first authors. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation of China (No.31702296) and the Science and Technology Innovation Project of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS-ASTIP-2022-IFST).

Link to the paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389422002011

Source: Institute of Food Science and Technology (IFST), CAAS

By Shupeng Yang (yangshupeng@caas.cn)