Rapid simultaneous detection of multi-pesticide residues on apple using SERS technique

Abstract

A rapid and straightforward method has been employed to simultaneously detect two pesticides (thiram and methamidophos (MTD)) on apple surface using surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) technique. In the experiment, ethanol was dropped onto the contaminated apple surface for pesticide extraction and then gold@silver core-shell nanorods (Au@Ag NRs) were added to generate the SERS signals of the pesticides. Under a laser excitation at 632.8 nm, prominent SERS peaks of blended contaminants were observed, which were chosen to characterize and quantify their concentration. It was found that the SERS intensity of these two peaks changed as a function of the concentration ratio of thiram to MTD. In addition, a better SERS enhancement performance of Au@Ag NRs was demonstrated compared with that of gold nanorods. Our experimental results show that the lowest detectable concentration on apple surfaces is ∼4.6 × 10(-7) M for thiram and ∼4.4 × 10(-4) M for MTD. This study provides a straightforward method for the simultaneous detection of multiple pesticides on fruit surfaces, which is important for food safety and human health.

Detection of pesticide residue distribution on fruit surfaces using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy imaging

“…15 Zhai et al studied the content of chlorpyrifos on apple skin using gold nanoparticles as the SERS substrate. 16 Zhang et al measured multiple pesticides on an apple surface using SERS technique, 17 while Albuquerque et al detected malathion on food surfaces with the SERS method.…”

Fe3O4@Graphene Oxide@Ag Particles for Surface Magnet Solid-Phase Extraction Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SMSPE-SERS): From Sample Pretreatment to Detection All-in-One

“…[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] One of the important applications of these magnetic SERS substrates is to detect pesticide residues on vegetables and fruit peels due to the fingerprint and high sensitivity provided by SERS. 38 However, in order to enrich analytes, pesticide molecules that have penetrated into the peels are preliminary extracted out of peel surface by ethanol for 1-2 h, [39][40][41] which is far away from the requirement of rapid detections and lies in the same time stage as HPLC (or HPLC-MS).…”

Review of SERS Substrates for Chemical Sensing

“…Using SERS a detection limit of 8 ppm was achieved. Suspensions of nanoparticles have also been used to detect pesticides using SERS [31]. While these compounds do not have aromatic rings, they do contain double bonds that exhibit reasonable Raman scattering cross sections.…”

“…These include benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes (BTEX) [2,3,4,5]; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) [6,7,8,9]; volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as chlorinated solvents [3,10] and methyl t-butyl ether (MTBE) [3]; heavy metals [11,12,13,14,15]; toxic or radioactive cations/anions [16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]; ionic nutrients [16,25,26,27]; pesticides [28,29,30,31,32]; drugs and pharmaceuticals [33,34,35,36,37,38]; and explosive materials [39,40,41,42,43]. In addition, SERS has been combined with other analytical techniques such as gas chromatography (GC) [44,45], thin layer chromatography (TLC) [46], liquid chromatography (LC) and flow injection analysis (FIA) [47,48,49], and electrochemistry [50,51].…”