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Detection of systemic pesticide residues in tea products at trace level based on SERS and verified by GC–MS

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Abstract

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) has the potential to detect pesticide residues in agricultural products. However, some systemic pesticides, such as chlorpyrifos, can enter the plant tissue, and not just stay on the surface. Consequently, many SERS studies halted at practical application because of its complexity. In this work, SERS technology was used to detect chlorpyrifos residues in tea products at the semiquantitative level. A simple pretreatment method effectively avoided interference of other fluorescent substances, and all major peaks could be distinguished on the basis of a novel substrate. A principal component analysis algorithm was applied to form a regression model, and a nanogram detection limit was obtained. Furthermore, chlorpyrifos residues in the same tea products were also measured by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, and the results show a small range of errors. From the comparative study of the two detection methods, the results suggest the great promise of SERS technology for rapid inspection of agricultural products.

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Acknowledgements

The project was financially supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (program no. 2662017JC035), and the National Science Foundation for Young Scholars of China (grant no. 31000316), the Application Research Program of Commonweal Technology of Zhejiang Province (no. 2014C37042), the Zhejiang Province University Students in Scientific and Technological Innovation Activities (no. 2016R409011), the Science and Technology project of Zhejiang Province (no. 2016C33026), and the Science and Technology Project of Three Gorges Emigration. PL also thanks the National Demonstration Base for Micro/nano-fabrication & Optoelectronic Detection and the International Science and Technology Cooperation for the support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Horticultural Plant Biology, Ministry of Education, College of Horticulture & Forestry Sciences, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, Hubei, China

    De Zhang, Jing Xia, Dejiang Ni & Zhi Yu

  2. College of Optical and Electronic Technology, China Jiliang University, Hangzhou, 310018, Zhejiang, China

    Pei Liang, Yongfeng Zhou, Jie Huang, Lisha Tang & Shangzhong Jin

  3. Analysis and Testing Center, Yangtze Delta Region Institute of Tsinghua University, Jiaxing, 314006, Zhejiang, China

    Jiaming Ye

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  1. De Zhang
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Zhang, D., Liang, P., Ye, J. et al. Detection of systemic pesticide residues in tea products at trace level based on SERS and verified by GC–MS. Anal Bioanal Chem 411, 7187–7196 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-019-02103-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-019-02103-7

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