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Introduced in 2003, the 'quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe' (QuEChERS) sample preparation approach has been widely adopted in many applications, particularly in chemical residue analysis of foods. Prior to QuEChERS, sample preparation generally entailed several time-consuming, labor-intensive, and reagent-excessive steps, but the commercialization at the time of powerful, cost-effective, benchtop gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and liquid chromatography-tandem MS (LC-MS/MS) instruments enabled the implementation of the QuEChERS procedure. Despite analytical technologies continuing to improve over the last two decades, many laboratories are still using QuEChERS protocols developed for outdated instrumentation. Recently, QuEChERS has been updated into QuEChERSER (with 'efficient and robust' being added to the portmanteau) to better take advantage of the features provided by modern sample preparation and analytical techniques. Most notably, QuEChERSER is a 'mega-method' that covers a broader scope of polar and nonpolar analytes in diverse sample types. In this article, the new QuEChERSER approach and its advantages over QuEChERS are explained., Twenty years ago, the 'quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe' (QuEChERS) approach for sample preparation was developed by Anastassiades and Lehotay at the United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research [...]

Low-pressure gas chromatography (LPGC) has been known to be advantageous compared to standard GC since Giddings first described the concept in 1962, but a practical solution for its use eluded [...]

Conventional chromatographic peak integration functions rely on complex software and settings, but untrustworthy integrations still routinely lead to time-consuming manual review and reintegrations. Current rugged gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) [...]

Sample preparation and analysis of trace compounds in difficult matrices has always been a challenge. In modern ages, the drive to expand food production to feed an ever-increasing population has [...]

The way to maximize scope of analysis, sample throughput, and laboratory efficiency in the monitoring of veterinary drug residues in food animals is to determine as many analytes as possible as fast as possible in as few methods as possible. Capital and overhead expenses are also reduced by using fewer instruments in the overall monitoring scheme. Traditionally, the highly polar aminoglycoside antibiotics require different chromatographic conditions from other classes of drugs, but in this work, we demonstrate that an ion-pairing reagent (sodium 1-heptanesulfonate) added to the combined final extracts from two sample preparation methods attains good separation of 174 targeted drugs, including 9 aminoglycosides, in the same 10.5-min ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) analysis. The full method was validated in bovine kidney, liver, and muscle tissues according to US regulatory protocols, and 137-146 (79-84%) of the drugs gave between 70 and 120% average recoveries with ≤ 25% RSDs in the different types of tissues spiked at 0.5, 1, and 2 times the regulatory levels of interest (10-1000 ng/g depending on the drug). This method increases sample throughput and the possible number of drugs monitored in the US National Residue Program, and requires only one UHPLC-MS/MS method and instrument for analysis rather than two by the previous scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural isomeric pesticides are used in agriculture and may be challenging to differentiate for accurate identification in pesticide monitoring programs. Due to structural similarity, isomeric pesticides are difficult to separate chromatographically, and thus, their accurate identification may rely solely on mass spectrometric analysis (MS). In this study, we challenged the ability of high-resolution quadrupole-orbitrap (Q-Orbitrap) mass spectrometry to produce and evaluate the tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) product ions for the selected five pairs of isomeric pesticides from different classes: Pebulate and vernolate, methiocarb and ethiofencarb, uniconazole and cyproconazole, sebuthylazine and terbuthylazine, and orbencarb and thiobencarb. The use of Q-Orbitrap instrument with a mass error <3 ppm allowed proposed elucidation of the product ion structures with consideration of the ion formulae, data interpretation, and literature searches. Product ions unique to pebulate, vernolate, methiocarb, ethiofencarb, and uniconazole were observed. Elucidation of the observed MS/MS product ion structures was conducted, and the fragmentation pathways were proposed. This information is valuable to increase selectivity in MS/MS analysis and differentiate isomeric pesticides, and thereby reduce the rates of false positives in pesticide monitoring programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]