Why QuEChERS is Getting More and More Popular?
Proposed by the US Department of Agriculture in 2003, after multiple verifications and improvements.
The established QuEchERS is the dispersive solid phase extraction and purification technology that is often mentioned by everyone. Today, the requirements for extraction and purification methods are becoming more and more stringent. Technology is still welcomed by its own advantages.
Pesticide residue analysis
Pesticide residue analysis is a complex trace analysis technique. The traditional pretreatment methods mainly include soxhlet extraction, oscillatory extraction, liquid-liquid partitioning, column chromatography, and centrifugation. These methods have the disadvantages of single sample extraction, long purification time, a large amount of toxic organic solvent, low sample recovery rate, and large impact on human health and environment, which can not meet the needs of pesticide analysis in modern batch foods.
At the same time, the composition of various foods is complex, which increases the difficulty of analysis and puts forward more stringent requirements for pesticide residue detection technology.
New technologies
At present, new technologies that have been reported or have been widely used include solid-phase extraction SPE, solid-phase microextraction SPME, supercritical fluid extraction SFE, ultrasonic extraction USE, microwave-assisted extraction MAE, rapid solvent extraction ASE, matrix solid-phase dispersion extraction MSPD, gel permeation chromatography GPC, molecularly imprinted synthetic receptor technology MISR, and the like.
Although these new technologies are efficient, fast, safe, and simple, and have less environmental pollution, they still cannot meet the technical requirements for the simultaneous detection of most pesticides and achieving better quality.
Advantages of QuEChERS
- QuEChERS is a multi-class and multi-residue analysis method for the determination of pesticides in high water content (80%-95%) samples. In food and environmental samples, one of the problems in the analysis of multi-residue pesticides is that the residual pesticides have a variety of chemical properties. At the same time, complex sample matrices may contain large amounts of chlorophyll, oils, sterols, and other ingredients. These may affect the results of the assay. The use of the QuEChERS method can reduce the impact of such problems;
- The method has good stability, high precision, and a high recovery rate. The addiction recovery rate for a large number of polar and volatile pesticides is greater than 85%;
- Correction with the internal standard method, high precision, and accuracy;
- Short analysis time, it can complete 10-20 pre-weighed sample determinations in 33-40 minutes;
- The solvent is used in a small amount, featuring low cost, small pollution, and the chloride-containing solvent is not used;
- Easy to use, it can be done well without good training and high skill;
- Very few pieces of glassware are used in the test process, and the equipment used in the sample preparation process is simple and requires little space. It can be completed in a small and mobile lab;
- The method has very strict requirements, and the organic acid is removed during the purification process.
Its advantages can be summarized in several points: First, the way is convenient and cheap, and the result is a stable and effective combination of high recovery, high precision, high throughput, and low reagent requirements, reducing the need for personnel to contact with solvents. Second, the operation is simple and the experiment is convenient, which can efficiently complete the extraction and purification work, helping to reduce the time of sample pretreatment that is critical to the speed of customs clearance; There is no need to use too much glass equipment and human resources, which has obvious advantages over traditional methods.
QuEchERS is an acronym for many English expressions. The main expressions are fast detection means, low detection cost, and safe detection process. First, the tissue samples are homogenized with a homogenizer, and mixed with a specific organic solvent, and the pH of the solution is adjusted to a weak acid state. The solution mixer is used to mix the samples. Using centrifuge tubes kits to centrifuge in order to extract the supernatant and use a specific adsorption tube for adsorption. The purpose of this is to purify the sample and quickly separate irrelevant impurities to achieve detection.
The standard QuEchERS method integrates the advantages of multiple extraction methods. The detection process has been reduced by the use frequency of chemical solvents, which protects the safety of laboratory personnel to a large extent.
At the same time, the accuracy of test results is improved, and the range of test indicators is gradually increasing. The method was used in conjunction with gas chromatography mass spectrometry to detect pesticide residues in traditional Chinese medicine. Compared with other detection methods, more pesticide residues have been detected, and for the lower recovery rate in the past, the current stage has also been greatly improved, improving the detection accuracy.
The liquid-mass combined instrument belongs to a detector used in combination with liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry detectors. This device has a very good extraction capability for liquid chromatography. In the detector section, a mass analyzer is used to select the target again, and then the ion abundance is converted into a peak that can be calculated quantitatively. With China’s investment in technology, more and more testing institutions have liquid-mass spectrometers. In the use of multiple reaction monitoring modes, pesticide residues, and mycotoxins detection have high sensitivity and good selectivity, which has great advantages.
QuEChERS are widely used in sample handling before food safety inspection. And food safety inspection is vitally important to our life and health. Today, here we are going to talk about the QuEChERS rationale and some related aspects.
Maybe, You could use follow QuECHERS products QuEChERS Kits, QuEChERS D-SPE Kits, QuEChERS Extraction Salts, QuEChERS Ceramic Homogenizers, QuEChERS Dispersive Absorbents, to complete your experiments.
