Supporting process trend analysis

Recent trends in pesticide analysis in food aims for reduced sample pretreatments or simplified methodologies (as QuEChERS approaches), the use of online purification processes, the use of new adsorbents (such as molecular imprinted polymers (MIPs) and nanomaterials) for the extraction and clean-up processes, and focused on the development of large multiresidue methods, most of them based on LC-MS/ MS. In spite of the relevant role of LC-MS/MS, GC-MS-based methods still play an important role in pesticide analysis in food. Despite the development achieved in the immunochemical approaches, the need for multi-residue methods has supported the development and use of instrumental techniques. 

The development of enzyme-catalyzed processes in organic solvents makes it possible to perform enzymatic analysis in organic solvents. Earlier work involved the addition of moderate amounts of solvents to improve substrate solubility, but the new trend is to operate in almost water-free conditions. The selection of reaction parameters is important. Thus, it is necessary to optimize the solvent (118,119) as well as the enzyme support (120). The polarity of the solvent is also important the more polar the solvent, the less stable the enzyme (119). Thus, extremely hydrophobic solvents are useful, provided the substrates and products are soluble. The choice of support is governed by its tendency to attract minute amounts of water present in the system. The supports are characterized with regard to their aquaphilicity There is an inverse correlation between aquaphilidty and catalytic activity of the adsorbed enzyme (121). 

Desktop computational power has supported two significant trends in data analysis. Global analysis, the simultaneous processing of data from multiple experiments, has allowed characterization of molecular systems over broad ranges of concentration. And the use of iterative methods to arrive at approximate... 

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