Agilent Technologies, Inc.

Whether the goal is food safety, ensuring quality or establishing provenance, measuring the trace element content of foods and beverages that we all consume is of paramount importance.

More than 1000 pesticides are currently used worldwide in the treatment of soil and crops. Many countries have established allowable levels of those pesticides in food to protect consumers. While these maximum residue levels (MRLs) vary, the default tolerance is 10 parts per billion (ppb).

Erythropoietin protein (EPO) is a glycoprotein hormone found in plasma. It is a cytokine for erythrocyte (red blood cell) precursors in the bone marrow.

Determination of pharmaceuticals in biological matrices is commonly employed in ADME (DMPK), clinical, and forensic analysis. The main techniques used for drug monitoring and analysis are immunoassays, LC, and GC methods.

This application note describes the method for detection of nanogram levels of explosive constituents in seawater samples (e.g., after detonation of unexploded ordnance devices). The improved chromatographic method was developed using the Agilent 1290 Infinity LC Method Development system.

An Agilent ZORBAX Rapid Resolution HT Eclipse Plus Phenyl-Hexyl column resolved many compounds from Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni plant extracts using an isocratic reversed phase method with UV and MS detection instead of a typical approach employing an amino column with a refractive index or other special detector. The Eclipse Plus Phenyl-Hexyl method's advantages include high peak capacity, isocratic mobile phase, low acetonitrile consumption, and MS compatibility.

Based on the QuEChERS AOAC Official Method 2007.01, sixteen pesticides were used for evaluating the performance of the Agilent's AOAC Buffered Extraction and SampliQ QuEChERS Dispersive SPE kits for General Fruits and Vegetables. Apple was selected as the fruit matrix. The pesticides are from the "representative pesticides" list (1). A method working well for these representative pesticides should work equally well for the other pesticides that are routinely monitored in multi-class, multi-residue methods. The compounds are from nine different pesticide classes: including acidic, basic, neutral, base-sensitive, and acid-labile pesticides. The selected pesticides are suitable for LC–MS-MS analysis. The MRLs of these pesticides have been set at 10 ng/g or higher (2–4).