Determination of Pesticides and Drug Residues by Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry

Dear Colleagues,

Food safety and the protection of consumers is assumed, today, to be one of the top priorities. Several worldwide entities are continuously revising legislation to ensure that the presence of undesirable contaminants in foodstuff is monitored and that the needed nutritional constituents are being valued. The need for constant control is due to the abusive use of certain pesticides in farms and veterinary medicines as growth promoters in animal production. To prevent the consequent health problems in humans and animals, the development of analytical methods for the determination of contaminant residues in food and feed is mandatory in food safety. To fulfill the specificity and selectivity criteria obligatory for an accurate detection, the use of chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry as the main analytical tool is necessary. Low-resolution mass spectrometry (LR-MS), as a coupled triple quadrupole, is the first choice in routine analysis and allows single determinations and multi-compound detection. The use of high-resolution mass spectrometry (HR-MS) in residue analysis has been increasing, offering the possibility of simultaneous analysis, without limitation in the number of compounds. Such techniques are also widely applied in the nutritional characterization of food products as a tool of choice.

Dr. Andreia Freitas
Guest Editor

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