Analytical Methodologies for Agrometallomics: A Critical Review

Abstract

Agrometallomics, as an independent interdiscipline, is first defined and described in this review. Metallic elements widely exist in agricultural plants, animals and edible fungi, seed, fertilizer, pesticide, feedstuff, as well as the agricultural environment and ecology, and even functional and pathogenic microorganisms. So, the agrometallome plays a vital role in molecular and organismic mechanisms like environmetallomics, metabolomics, proteomics, lipidomics, glycomics, immunomics, genomics, etc. To further reveal the inner and mutual mechanism of the agrometallome, comprehensive and systematic methodologies for the analysis of beneficial and toxic metals are indispensable to investigate elemental existence, concentration, distribution, speciation, and forms in agricultural lives and media. Based on agrometallomics, this review summarizes and discusses the advanced technical progress and future perspectives of metallic analytical approaches, which are categorized into ultrasensitive and high-throughput analysis, elemental speciation and state analysis, and spatial- and microanalysis. Furthermore, the progress of agrometallomic innovativeness greatly depends on the innovative development of modern metallic analysis approaches including, but not limited to, high sensitivity, elemental coverage, and anti-interference; high-resolution isotopic analysis; solid sampling and nondestructive analysis; metal chemical species and metal forms, associated molecular clusters, and macromolecular complexes analysis; and metal-related particles or metal within the microsize and even single cell or subcellular analysis.

A tutorial review on methods of agricultural product sample pretreatment and target analysis by laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy

“…They usually imply lengthy and complex sample preparation steps and chemical waste products. 67 Although it is difficult to analyze agricultural products without any sample preparation, for LIBS analysis, sample preparation is minimal compared to reference methods (e.g., AAS and ICP-MS). Moreover, it is possible to choose a more suitable sample preparation method according to the actual demand, which oen requires less complex sample preparation just for qualitative analysis.…”

“…They usually imply lengthy and complex sample preparation steps and chemical waste products. 67 Although it is difficult to analyze agricultural products without any sample preparation, for LIBS analysis, sample preparation is minimal compared to reference methods ( e.g. , AAS and ICP-MS).…”

Metallomics in Multidisciplinary Research and the Analytical Advances

“…Agrometallomics was recently proposed as an interdisciplinary area between agriculture science and metallomics to fulfill this purpose. 24 In this issue, we are very pleased to see more branches of metallomics such as metrometallomics, 25 clinimetallomics, 26 radiometallomics, 27 matermetallomics, 28 and archaeometallomics 29 have been proposed, reflecting the prosperity of the metallomics field.…”

Pew2: Open-Source Imaging Software for Laser Ablation–Inductively Coupled Plasma–Mass Spectrometry

“…The high sensitivity of laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) makes it the preferred technique for imaging trace elements in biological tissues. Since the seminal paper of Gray, there has been significant improvements in the speed, sensitivity, and resolution of LA-ICP-MS imaging with growing utility for medical, life science, environmental, geoscience, and food safety applications. − However, there has been sporadic development of data reduction software with no preferred open-source option available. While a large library of software does exist for the conversion and analysis of MS imaging (MSI) data, very few of these programs focus on LA-ICP-MS data specifically (Table ).…”