Rapid and Reliable Data Treatment for the Control of Food Chemical Contaminants by LC-HRMS

Liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) is considered an unavoidable extension of low-resolution LC-MS/MS that stretches the capabilities of multi-residue analysis of chemical contaminants in food. However, LC-HRMS acquisitions generate a massive amount of information available for data processing with supplier software that still miss critical calculation features and adapted reporting tools. Consequently, routine laboratories are still reluctant to switch from LC-MS/MS to LC-HRMS, the latter is still perceived as a cumbersome and demanding technology. In that context, we propose a four-step LC-HRMS workflow to speed-up data processing in situations of multi-residue multi-matrix analysis with the goal to maximize the time spent on data interpretation rather than on data formatting. The first three steps of the workflow imply specific settings on the Orbitrap HRMS associated software (TraceFinder